Maynard, Robert Clyve
1937-1993 · Contribution: 1961-1993
Editor; newspaper owner
Became, 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 Prize

Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Quick facts
- Born
- 1937, Brooklyn, New York
- Active since
- 1961
- Category
- Press & Photography
- Best known for
- First Black owner of a major metropolitan daily newspaper
Impact on the world
Maynard shattered the ceiling of newspaper ownership and built the training institution that has since brought more journalists of color into American newsrooms than any other.
Sources
- BlackPast.org
1 more sources and references are available to members.
Related visionaries
Gilliam, Dorothy Pearl Butler
1936-present
Became 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 Institute
Caldwell, Earl
1939-present
Became 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 sources
Booker, Simeon Saunders Jr.
1918-2017
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
Scott, William Alexander II
1902-1934
Founded 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 publications