Lemon, Don Renaldo
1966-present · Contribution: 1996-2023
Anchored 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 Transparent
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Impact on the world
Lemon built his career at local stations in Birmingham, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Chicago before joining NBC News as a New York-based correspondent for Today and NBC Nightly News, winning an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2002 for his coverage of the Washington, D.C., sniper case and multiple regional Emmy Awards, including for reporting on the AIDS epidemic in Africa and Hurricane Katrina. He joined CNN in 2006, anchored its weekend primetime Newsroom before becoming permanent host of CNN Tonight in 2014, and covered a string of major national stories including the Sandy Hook and Ferguson unrest, the George Zimmerman trial, and the 2013 presidential inauguration; his emotional on-air disclosure of childhood sexual abuse during a 2010 interview about a Georgia megachurch scandal, and his 2011 memoir revealing he was gay, made him a widely cited role model within Black LGBTQ communities, and Ebony named him to its Power 150 list of influential African Americans in 2009. Lemon briefly co-anchored the CNN This Morning program before departing the network in April 2023, and has since continued reporting independently and authored several bestselling books, including This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism.
Life & background
Born March 1, 1966, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Lemon attended Louisiana State University before earning a broadcast journalism degree from Brooklyn College in New York, interning at Fox affiliate WNYW along the way. He worked at local television stations in Birmingham, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Chicago from the late 1990s through 2003, joined NBC News before moving to CNN in September 2006, and remained there until April 2023; he continues to write and produce independent journalism.
Sources
- BlackPast.org; Bhamwiki; CNN
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