Booker, Simeon Saunders Jr.
1918-2017 · Contribution: 1952-2007
Journalist; Washington bureau chief
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 audience
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Quick facts
- Born
- 1918, Baltimore, Maryland
- Active since
- 1952
- Category
- Press & Photography
- Best known for
- First Black staff reporter at the Washington Post; Jet's coverage of the Emmett Till trial
Impact on the world
Booker's Emmett Till reporting helped make a single Mississippi murder a national reckoning; over 53 years he chronicled ten presidencies and the civil rights movement for the Black press's flagship magazine.
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Sources
- Source lookupFind
Washington Post
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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 funeral