Bennett, Lerone Jr.

Thompson, Era Bell

1905-1986

Served 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 diaspora

Davis, Griffith Jerome

1923-1993

Became 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 Service

Hannah-Jones, Nikole

1976-present

Created 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 docuseries

Wilkerson, Isabel

1961-present

Became 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 century