Stone, Charles Sumner “Chuck” Jr.

Payne, Leslie “Les”

1941-2018

Won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service as part of Newsday’s “Heroin Trail” investigative team, co-founded the National Association of Black Journalists in 1975, and, nearly three decades in the making, posthumously won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for The Dead Are Arising, his exhaustively researched life of Malcolm X, completed after his death by his daughter and principal researcher, Tamara Payne

Jarrett, Vernon Daurice

1918-2004

Became the first African American syndicated columnist at both the Chicago Tribune (1970) and the Chicago Sun-Times (1983), writing nearly 4,000 columns over a 50-year career and co-founding the National Association of Black Journalists in 1975

Robinson, Maxie Cleveland Jr.

1939-1988

Became, in 1978, the first African American to anchor a nightly network newscast, co-anchoring ABC's “World News Tonight” from Chicago alongside Frank Reynolds and Peter Jennings, and co-founded the National Association of Black Journalists in 1975

Rowan, Carl Thomas

1925-2000

Became the highest-ranking African American in the U.S. government as director of the United States Information Agency under President Lyndon Johnson, then spent more than three decades as one of the nation’s most widely syndicated Black newspaper columnists