Black American Storyteller

Black History Profile: Charlayne Hunter-Gault

Charlayne Hunter-Gault

As I mentioned several times on Arts of Cultures, America is currently stuck in a cycle of racial tension. In the past, traditional media wasn’t covering Black History Month as much as I expected. 

I wonder what Charlayne Hunter-Gault has to say about BHM coverage today. For those of you who don't know who Hunter-Gault is, she started her journalism career in 1959. She fought a legal battle for minorities’ right to enroll in the University of Georgia, eventually becoming the first Black to graduate from there.

Hunter-Gault has been involved in broadcast media since 1967 and has worked for a number of media outlets including PBS, NPR and CNN. She won two Emmys and a Peabody award for her work on Apartheid’s People, a series on South African life during apartheid. 

Hunter-Gault written four books: In My Place, a memoir of the civil rights movement based on her experiences as the first black woman to attend the University of Georgia; New News Out of Africa: Uncovering the African Renaissance; To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement; and, her latest, Corrective Rape, about violence against gay women in South Africa.

Its journalists like Hunter-Gault who I don’t hear enough about. Its journalist like Hunter-Gault who I don’t see or hear enough of as I shuffle through news radio/television stations. Its journalists and storytellers like Hunter-Gault who should be telling the stories of Black America. 

So where are the emerging Black American storytellers?
Why don’t we hear more about them?
Leave your comments below or e-mail me your findings at TCsViews@gmail.com.

— @TCsViews