Garland, Hazel Barbara Maxine
1913-1988 · Contribution: 1943-1977
Rose 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 Courier
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Impact on the world
Denied a full high school education by her father, who believed girls’ schooling was wasted, Garland began writing a $2-per-article community column for the Pittsburgh Courier in 1943 after her volunteer club reports impressed its editors, and joined the paper full-time in 1946; by 1952 she was the first woman to serve as feature editor of any section of the Courier, and her 1953 profile of rural South Carolina nurse-midwife Maude Callen won a New York Newspaper Guild Page One Award. After John H. Sengstacke, also profiled in this collection, purchased the financially struggling paper and renamed it the New Pittsburgh Courier in 1966, he promoted Garland to city editor in 1972 over some colleagues’ objections to a woman holding a management role, then to editor-in-chief in 1974, making her the first Black woman in American history to lead a newspaper’s daily editorial operations; that year she was also named the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s Editor of the Year, and in 1976 she led the paper to the NNPA’s John B. Russwurm Award for best national Black newspaper. Fellow journalist Frank Bolden called her indispensable to the Courier’s survival during the Sengstacke transition, ranking her alongside Ethel Payne, also profiled in this collection, as one of the era’s two most influential Black women in journalism.
Life & background
Born Hazel Barbara Maxine Hill on January 28, 1913, in Terre Haute, Indiana, the eldest of sixteen children of farmers who later moved the family to Pennsylvania coal country, Garland was forced to leave high school so her brother could continue his education, and worked as a maid before becoming a housewife after her 1935 marriage. She began writing for the Pittsburgh Courier as a volunteer club reporter in 1943, joined the staff full-time in 1946, rose to city editor in 1972 and editor-in-chief in 1974, retired from that post in 1977 due to illness while continuing to write columns, and died in Pittsburgh on April 5, 1988, at age 75; her daughter, Phyllis “Phyl” Garland, became the first Black tenured faculty member at Columbia University’s journalism school.
Sources
- New Pittsburgh Courier; National Women's History Alliance; Encyclopedia entries via Nicole Evelina
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