- Abbott, Robert SengstackeFounded the Chicago Defender in 1905 with a 25-cent investment, building it into the most influential Black newspaper in the country and a primary catalyst of the Great Migration of roughly 1.5 million Black Southerners northward1870-1940
- Alcindor, Yamiche LéoneServed as PBS NewsHour’s White House correspondent from 2018 to 2022, becoming a leading chronicler of the Trump and early Biden presidencies before succeeding her mentor Gwen Ifill, also profiled in this collection, as moderator of PBS’s Washington Week1986-present
- Ball, James PresleyBuilt one of the first successful African American-owned photography studios in the country, operating “Ball’s Great Daguerrean Gallery of the West” in Cincinnati from 1849 and photographing subjects from Frederick Douglass to Queen Victoria over a 50-year, coast-to-coast career1825-1904
- Barboza, AnthonyBuilt a five-decade commercial and fine-art photography career after joining the Kamoinge Workshop in 1963 as its youngest member, later serving as the collective’s president from 2005 to 2016 and co-editing its landmark 2015 history, Timeless: Photographs by Kamoinge1944-present
- Barnett, Claude AlbertFounded the Associated Negro Press in 1919, the first sustained national and international wire service built specifically for Black newspapers, which at its peak supplied news, columns, and photographs to roughly 200 African American publications across the United States, the West Indies, and Africa1889-1967
- Bass, Charlotta Amanda SpearsBecame the first African American woman to own and operate a newspaper in the United States, running the California Eagle for nearly four decades, then became the first Black woman nominated for U.S. vice president in 19521874-1969
- Battey, Cornelius Marion “C.M.”Produced the definitive early-20th-century studio portraits of Black leaders including the now-iconic 1918 image of W.E.B. Du Bois, then founded and headed the photography department at Tuskegee Institute from 1916 until his death1873-1927
- Bedou, Arthur PaulServed as Booker T. Washington’s personal photographer from 1908 until Washington’s 1915 death, then built a nearly six-decade career as one of New Orleans’s leading studio photographers, documenting Black Creole family life, Xavier University, and the city’s Catholic institutions1882-1966
- Bennett, Lerone Jr.Spent more than fifty years at Johnson Publishing Company’s Ebony magazine, rising to executive editor, and used its pages to publish groundbreaking popular history — above all Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (1962) — that made him the era’s most widely read chronicler of the African American past1928-2018
- Booker, Simeon Saunders Jr.Became the first Black staff reporter at the Washington Post in 1952, then spent 51 years as Jet magazine's Washington bureau chief, most notably delivering the 1955 Emmett Till murder trial to a national audience1918-2017
- Bradley, Edward Rudolph “Ed”Reported roughly 500 stories across a 25-year run on 60 Minutes — more than any other correspondent over the same period — after becoming CBS News’ first African American White House correspondent and being wounded covering the Vietnam War1941-2006
- Caldwell, EarlBecame the first African American national correspondent for The New York Times, was the only reporter present when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, and won a landmark reporter’s-privilege case, United States v. Caldwell, after refusing an FBI subpoena demanding his confidential Black Panther Party sources1939-present
- Cary, Mary Ann ShaddFounded The Provincial Freeman in 1853, becoming the first Black woman to edit and publish a newspaper in North America, using the Canadian weekly to promote Black emigration, integration, and self-reliance during the era of the Fugitive Slave Act1823-1893
- Clayton, XernonaBecame the first Black person in the American South to host a regularly scheduled prime-time television talk show when Themes and Variations (later The Xernona Clayton Show) premiered on Atlanta’s WAGA-TV in 1967, then spent three decades as a pioneering Turner Broadcasting executive1930-present
- Cooke, Marvel JacksonBecame, in 1950, the first African American woman to work as a reporter at a mainstream white-owned newspaper when she joined New York’s Daily Compass, capping a career in which she was already the first woman reporter in the 40-year history of the New York Amsterdam News1903-2000
- Cornish, Samuel EliCo-founded Freedom's Journal in 1827, the first African American-owned and -operated newspaper in the United States, and went on to found or co-found three more Black newspapers over the following decadec. 1795-1858
- Cowans, Adger W.Became a founding member of the Kamoinge Workshop in 1963 after working alongside Gordon Parks at Life magazine, and went on to become the first African American still photographer in Hollywood, working on more than 30 feature films1936-present
- Davis, Belvagene “Belva”Became the first African American woman hired as a television news reporter on the U.S. West Coast when KPIX-TV in San Francisco hired her in 1966, launching a nearly five-decade Bay Area broadcasting career1932-2025
- Davis, Frank MarshallTransformed the Atlanta Daily World into the first successful African American daily newspaper as its managing editor in the early 1930s, then spent twelve years as executive editor of the Associated Negro Press while building a parallel career as one of the era’s most acclaimed social-realist poets1905-1987
- Davis, Griffith JeromeBecame Ebony magazine’s first roving editor at Langston Hughes’s recommendation, then, as the only African American freelance photojournalist for the Black Star picture agency, chronicled the dawn of African independence in Liberia, Ethiopia, and Ghana before pioneering the racial integration of the U.S. Foreign Service1923-1993
- DeCarava, Roy RudolphBecame, in 1952, the first African American photographer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship, using it to produce The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955) with Langston Hughes and establishing Black-and-white fine-art photography of everyday Black life as a serious artistic practice distinct from social documentary1919-2009
- Draper, Louis HanselHelped found the Kamoinge Workshop in 1963 and served as the guiding force behind its founding vision and 50-year history, photographing Harlem street life and civil rights-era figures including Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X, and John Coltrane1935-2002
- Dunnigan, Alice AllisonBecame the first African American woman credentialed to cover the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, breaking into the Senate and House press galleries in 1947 and covering three U.S. presidents over a fourteen-year Washington career1906-1983
- Fortune, Timothy ThomasBuilt the New York Age into the most influential Black newspaper of the late 19th century and founded the National Afro-American League in 1890, a direct forerunner to the NAACP, earning him the title “Dean of Negro Journalism”1856-1928
- Garland, Hazel Barbara MaxineRose from unpaid community club reporter to become, in 1974, the first African American woman to serve as editor-in-chief of a nationally circulated newspaper chain when she took the helm of the New Pittsburgh Courier1913-1988
- Gillespie, Marcia AnnBecame editor-in-chief of Essence magazine at age 26 in 1971, then, in 1993, editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine, making her the first African American woman to lead a mainstream national magazine not aimed specifically at Black readers1944-present
- Gilliam, Dorothy Pearl ButlerBecame the first African American woman hired as a reporter at The Washington Post in 1961, launching a 50-year career there that included covering the integration of the University of Mississippi and, later, co-founding the journalism-diversity organization now known as the Maynard Institute1936-present
- Goode, Malvin Russell “Mal”Became the first African American correspondent for a U.S. television news network when ABC News hired him in 1962, making his on-air debut with breaking coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the United Nations1908-1995
- Gumbel, Bryant CharlesBecame the first Black journalist to host a major network morning news program when he took over NBC’s Today in 1982, then spent 29 seasons (1995-2023) hosting HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, widely regarded as the most honored program in sports journalism history1948-present
- Hannah-Jones, NikoleCreated The 1619 Project for The New York Times Magazine in 2019, a sweeping reexamination of slavery’s central role in the American founding and its ongoing legacy that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary and expanded into a bestselling book, school curriculum, and Hulu docuseries1976-present
- Hansen, AustinChronicled Harlem community life for nearly six decades as a studio and freelance photographer, building an archive of more than 500,000 portraits — now held primarily at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — documenting everyone from working-class families to Haile Selassie, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.1910-1996
- Harris, Charles “Teenie”Spent roughly four decades as staff and freelance photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier, amassing an archive of nearly 80,000 images — now held by the Carnegie Museum of Art — that forms one of the largest and richest visual chronicles of 20th-century Black urban life in the United States1908-1998
- Haynes, Gertrude “Trudy”Became the nation’s first Black television weather reporter at Detroit’s WXYZ-TV in 1963, then, in 1965, the first Black television news reporter in Philadelphia at KYW-TV, where she worked for 33 years until her 1999 retirement1926-2022
- Higgins, Chester Jr.Spent nearly four decades as a New York Times staff photographer while producing an acclaimed body of work documenting the global African diaspora, published in books including Feeling the Spirit (1994) and Echo of the Spirit (2004)1946-present
- Holt, Lester Don Jr.Became the first African American to solo anchor a major U.S. network’s weekday evening newscast when he took over NBC Nightly News in 2015, a post he held for a decade before moving to lead Dateline NBC full-time1959-present
- Hunter-Gault, CharlayneBecame, alongside Hamilton Holmes, the first African American student to integrate the University of Georgia in 1961, then built a five-decade journalism career as the New York Times' Harlem bureau chief, a PBS NewsHour national correspondent, and Africa bureau chief for NPR and CNN1942-present
- Ifill, Gwendolyn L.Became, in 1999, the first African American woman to host a nationally televised U.S. public affairs program, moderating PBS's “Washington Week,” and in 2013 formed the first all-female co-anchor team in network news history alongside Judy Woodruff on the PBS NewsHour1955-2016
- Jackson, Emory OvertonEdited the Birmingham World for 35 years, earning the nickname “The Voice of Black Birmingham” for his relentless documentation of voting rights struggles, police brutality, and school segregation throughout the Alabama civil rights movement1908-1975
- Jarrett, Vernon DauriceBecame the first African American syndicated columnist at both the Chicago Tribune (1970) and the Chicago Sun-Times (1983), writing nearly 4,000 columns over a 50-year career and co-founding the National Association of Black Journalists in 19751918-2004
- Lacy, Samuel Harold “Sam”Spent nearly 60 years as sports editor and columnist for the Baltimore Afro-American, campaigning through the 1930s and 1940s for the integration of Major League Baseball and helping bring Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson together, work recognized with the Baseball Hall of Fame’s J.G. Taylor Spink Award in 19971903-2003
- Lavalette, William A.Improvements to the printing press: a refined construction and arrangement for smoother, more even operation, with more easily removable parts for cleaning and an improved mechanism for loading and unloading paperc.1841-1914
- Lemon, Don RenaldoAnchored CNN Tonight and other prime-time CNN programs for 17 years (2006-2023), and in 2011 became the most prominent African American television journalist to publicly come out as gay, a disclosure made in his memoir Transparent1966-present
- Lomax, Louis EmanuelBecame the first African American television journalist in 1958 when he joined New York’s WNTA-TV, then co-produced with Mike Wallace The Hate That Hate Produced (1959), the influential documentary that introduced most white Americans to the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and Elijah Muhammad1922-1970
- Martin, Roland SebastianBuilt Roland Martin Unfiltered into one of the most-watched independent Black-owned news programs in the country, growing it from a 2018 web series into the flagship of the Black Star Network after a career as executive editor of the Chicago Defender and a longtime CNN political contributor1968-present
- Maynard, Robert ClyveBecame, in 1983, the first African American to own a major metropolitan daily newspaper in the United States, purchasing the Oakland Tribune and leading it to a 1990 Pulitzer Prize1937-1993
- McAlpin, Harry SylvesterBecame the first African American reporter accredited to and to attend a U.S. presidential press conference, entering the Oval Office on February 8, 1944, over the objections of the all-white White House Correspondents’ Association1906-1985
- McNeill, Robert H.Documented Black community life in Washington, D.C., for more than four decades while producing what became a foundational visual record of African American life in Depression-era Virginia for the Works Progress Administration’s 1940 publication The Negro in Virginia1917-2005
- Moutoussamy-Ashe, JeanneSpent five years (1977-1982) documenting the Gullah Geechee community of South Carolina’s Daufuskie Island before development transformed it, publishing the results as Daufuskie Island (1982) with a foreword by Alex Haley, and authored Viewfinders (1986), the first book-length history of Black women photographers in America1951-present
- Muhammad, OzierShared the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for Newsday’s “Africa, the Desperate Continent” series documenting famine on the continent, then spent 22 years as a staff photographer for The New York Times covering Nelson Mandela’s inauguration, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath1950-present
- Murphy, Carl James GreenburyLed the Baltimore Afro-American for 45 years after his father’s death in 1922, building it from a single 14,000-circulation weekly into a nine-edition national newspaper chain reaching more than 200,000 readers across 13 cities1889-1967
- Murphy, John Henry Sr.Founded the Baltimore Afro-American in 1892 by merging his church newsletter with a bankrupt local paper he purchased for $200, building what remains one of the oldest continuously operating Black family-owned newspapers in the United States1840-1922
- Noble, Gilbert Edward “Gil”Created and hosted WABC-TV’s Like It Is for 43 years, the longest-running Black public affairs program in New York television history, producing landmark documentaries on Malcolm X, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King Jr.1932-2012
- Norris, Michele L.Became the first African American woman to host NPR’s flagship program All Things Considered in 2002, then created The Race Card Project in 2010, a Peabody Award-winning national storytelling initiative that has collected more than 500,000 six-word narratives about race and identity1961-present
- O’Brien, María de la Soledad TeresaAnchored CNN’s American Morning and created the network’s landmark In America documentary series, including Black in America and Latino in America, before founding Starfish Media Group in 2013 to continue producing hard-hitting documentary journalism on race and inequality1966-present
- Payne, Ethel LoisBecame, alongside Alice Dunnigan, one of the first Black women in the White House press corps, earning the title “First Lady of the Black Press” for three decades of Washington and international reporting for the Chicago Defender that helped set the national civil rights agenda1911-1991
- Payne, Leslie “Les”Won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service as part of Newsday’s “Heroin Trail” investigative team, co-founded the National Association of Black Journalists in 1975, and, nearly three decades in the making, posthumously won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for The Dead Are Arising, his exhaustively researched life of Malcolm X, completed after his death by his daughter and principal researcher, Tamara Payne1941-2018
- Pitts, Byron A.Overcame childhood illiteracy and a severe stutter to become chief national correspondent for CBS Evening News and a regular 60 Minutes contributor, then co-anchor of ABC News’ Nightline, winning multiple Emmy Awards over more than four decades in broadcast journalism1960-present
- Polk, Prentice Herman “P.H.”Served as Tuskegee Institute’s official photographer for roughly four decades, developing a sharp-focused, high-contrast portrait style used to document George Washington Carver, the Tuskegee Airmen, and both the campus elite and rural working-class Alabamians in his celebrated “Old Characters” series1898-1984
- Randall, Herbert Eugene Jr.Co-founded the Kamoinge Workshop in 1963, then spent the summer of 1964 as the primary photographer embedded with Mississippi Freedom Summer’s Hattiesburg project, producing 1,759 negatives that stand as one of the most complete visual records of a single Civil Rights-era community1936-present
- Reed, Ellis “Eli”Became the first Black photographer admitted as a full member of Magnum Photos, the world’s most prestigious photojournalism cooperative, in 1988, following acclaimed coverage of civil wars in Lebanon and Central America1946-present
- Roberts, Richard SamuelOperated a Columbia, South Carolina, portrait studio from 1922 to 1936 that produced what became, after a chance 1977 rediscovery of his glass-plate negatives, the most comprehensive surviving photographic record of a Southern Black middle class community in the early 20th century1880-1936
- Roberts, Robin RenéeBecame the first Black woman to anchor ESPN’s flagship SportsCenter program in 1990, then, since 2005, has co-anchored ABC’s Good Morning America, leading it back to the No. 1 morning-show ranking and earning a 2012 Peabody Award for her on-air documentation of her own cancer treatment1960-present
- Robinson, Maxie Cleveland Jr.Became, in 1978, the first African American to anchor a nightly network newscast, co-anchoring ABC's “World News Tonight” from Chicago alongside Frank Reynolds and Peter Jennings, and co-founded the National Association of Black Journalists in 19751939-1988
- Rowan, Carl ThomasBecame the highest-ranking African American in the U.S. government as director of the United States Information Agency under President Lyndon Johnson, then spent more than three decades as one of the nation’s most widely syndicated Black newspaper columnists1925-2000
- Russwurm, John BrownCo-founded Freedom's Journal in 1827, the first African American-owned and -operated newspaper in the United States, and became just the third Black person to graduate from an American college1799-1851
- Ryan, April DanielleServed as a White House correspondent for nearly three decades beginning in 1997, becoming the longest-serving Black female reporter in the White House press corps and covering five presidential administrations for American Urban Radio Networks and later theGrio1967-present
- Schuyler, George SamuelWrote for the Pittsburgh Courier for more than four decades as columnist and chief editorial writer, and published Black No More (1931), widely considered the first satirical novel written by an African American author1895-1977
- Scott, William Alexander IIFounded the Atlanta World in 1928 at age 26, which became the Atlanta Daily World in 1932 — the first successful African American daily newspaper of the 20th century — and built the nation’s first chain of Black newspapers, eventually growing to fifty publications1902-1934
- Scurlock, Addison NortonBuilt the Scurlock Studio into the definitive photographic chronicle of Black Washington, D.C., for six decades, becoming Howard University's official photographer and the portraitist whose work signified having “arrived socially” in the city's Black community1883-1964
- Sengstacke, John Herman HenryInherited the Chicago Defender from his uncle, founder Robert Abbott, in 1940, converted it to a daily newspaper in 1956, and founded the National Newspaper Publishers Association the same week as Abbott’s death, uniting the country’s Black-owned newspapers into a collective national voice for the first time1912-1997
- Shaw, BernardServed as CNN’s first chief anchor from the network’s 1980 launch until his 2001 retirement, becoming, alongside correspondents Peter Arnett and John Holliman, one of the “Boys of Baghdad” whose live 1991 Gulf War broadcasts helped establish CNN as a credible major news outlet1940-2022
- Simpson, Carole EstelleBecame the first African American woman to anchor a major U.S. network newscast when NBC News hired her as a correspondent in 1975, and, after 15 years anchoring ABC’s World News Tonight weekend edition, became in 1992 the first woman and first person of color to serve as sole moderator of a U.S. presidential debate1940-present
- Sleet, Moneta J. Jr.Became the first African American man to win the Pulitzer Prize and the first person to win it while working for a Black-owned publication, awarded in 1969 for his photograph of Coretta Scott King at Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral1926-1996
- Smith, BeufordJoined the Kamoinge Workshop as an early member in 1965 and later served as its president, co-founded the Black Photographers Annual in 1972, and spent six decades documenting Black community life, jazz musicians, and street scenes in New York City1936-2025
- Smith, John WendellRecommended Jackie Robinson to Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey and served as Robinson’s traveling companion, ghostwriter, and confidant through his 1946-47 integration of professional baseball, work recognized posthumously with the Baseball Hall of Fame’s J.G. Taylor Spink Award in 19931914-1972
- Smith, MingBecame the first Black woman member of the Kamoinge Workshop around 1973 and, in 1979, the first African American woman photographer whose work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection1947-present
- Stone, Charles Sumner “Chuck” Jr.Became the first Black columnist at the Philadelphia Daily News in 1972, syndicated to nearly 100 publications, and co-founded and served as the first president of the National Association of Black Journalists in 19751924-2014
- Taylor, Susan L.Rose from freelance beauty editor to editor-in-chief of Essence magazine, a post she held from 1981 to 2000, becoming, according to a 1994 American Libraries assessment, “the most influential black woman in journalism” of her era1946-present
- Terry, Wallace Houston IIServed as Time magazine’s first Black war correspondent on permanent duty in Vietnam, covering the Tet Offensive and combat missions from 1967 to 1969, then spent over a decade compiling Bloods (1984), the landmark oral history of Black Vietnam veterans that inspired Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods1938-2003
- Thompson, Era BellServed as international editor of Ebony magazine for roughly two decades within a nearly 40-year career at Johnson Publishing Company, traveling to 124 countries and shaping the magazine’s global coverage of the African diaspora1905-1986
- Tolliver, MelbaBecame the first Black person to anchor a network news program in the United States in 1967 when, as an ABC secretary, she filled in on air during a broadcasting strike, then spent nearly three decades as a New York City television reporter and anchor at WABC, WNBC, and News 12 Long Island1939-present
- Trotter, William MonroeFounded the Boston Guardian in 1901 to campaign against Booker T. Washington’s accommodationist politics and for full Black civil rights, establishing himself as the militant conscience of the early 20th-century Black press1872-1934
- Tyler, Ralph WaldoBecame the only African American war correspondent officially accredited by the U.S. government during World War I, reporting from the front lines in France on the achievements and discrimination faced by Black soldiers of the 92nd and 93rd Divisions1860-1921
- Van Der Zee, James AugustusProduced the most comprehensive photographic chronicle of the Harlem Renaissance, running his Harlem studio from 1916 for over four decades and creating stylized portraits that both documented and helped shape the era's image of Black middle-class aspiration and pride1886-1983
- Vann, Robert LeeBuilt the Pittsburgh Courier from a struggling startup into the largest African American newspaper in the country, reaching a circulation of 250,000 by 1938, and helped engineer the historic 1932 shift of Black voters from the Republican to the Democratic Party1879-1940
- Washington, AugustusBuilt one of the most successful daguerreotype studios in antebellum Hartford, Connecticut, then emigrated to Liberia in 1853 to become one of the earliest professional photographers to work in West Africa, documenting the young republic’s political and merchant elite1820-1875
- Wells-Barnett, Ida BellPioneered investigative anti-lynching journalism, documenting and statistically analyzing hundreds of lynchings in the 1890s after co-owning and writing for the Memphis Free Speech, work that earned her a posthumous 2020 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation1862-1931
- Wilkerson, IsabelBecame the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism, awarded in 1994 for feature writing as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times, and went on to author The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste, two of the most acclaimed and widely read works of American nonfiction of the twenty-first century1961-present
- Withers, Ernest Columbus Sr.Photographed nearly every major event of the Southern civil rights movement over a 60-year career, including the Emmett Till murder trial, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the “I Am a Man” Memphis sanitation strike, while also — as revealed decades after his death — secretly reporting information about the movement to the FBI1922-2007
- Young, Plummer Bernard Sr.Purchased a small fraternal newsletter for $3,050 in 1910 and built it over 52 years into the Norfolk Journal and Guide, the largest-circulation Black newspaper in the American South and, by many accounts, the best-edited Black newspaper in the country1884-1962