Brooklyn, NY--Evelyn Cunningham, a journalist who risked her life in the early 1950s covering the budding civil rights movement, will accept the George Polk Career Award on April 15 in Manhattan on behalf of the Pittsburgh Courier, the pioneering African American newspaper for which she worked for many years. (Editors: please note that Cunningham is available for interviews.)
Among the nation's most respected and coveted journalism prizes, the Polk Awards were established by Long Island University in 1949 in honor of CBS Correspondent George Polk, who was slain a year earlier while covering the civil war in Greece. This year marks the first time in the Polk's 49-year history that the career award is being presented to a publication rather than an individual.
A graduate of Long Island University (class of 1943), Cunningham started working for the Courier in 1939, before completing her studies. In addition to covering Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, she served as New York City editor and a columnist during her long tenure with the paper.
While reporting from the South, she chronicled the Montgomery bus boycott, lynchings, the fight for desegregation, and wrote a three-part series about King and his family. She also was jailed in Maryland during a protest over segregation.
In 1967 Cunningham was appointed a special assistant to Governor Rockefeller and in 1969 was named director of the Women's Unit of the State of New York. She later served on the Secretary's Advisory Committee on the Rights and Responsibilities of Women, U.S. Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare (now the Dept. of Health and Human Services). She is a founding member of the Coalition of 100 Black Women.
Cunningham, along with veteran journalists Frank Bolden, Charles "Teenie" Harris, Harold L. Keith and Edna Chappell McKenzie, is receiving the award on behalf of a generation of black reporters, editors, photographers and columnists, such as J.A. Rogers and George Schuyler. Every week, they brought controversy into the homes of information-starved readers across the country.
"During its heyday, from 1930 to roughly 1960, the Pittsburgh Courier reached a circulation peak of more than 300,000, surpassing its competitors, and set high standards in national and foreign reporting as week after week it railed against pervasive racial injustice in the United States," noted Ron O. Howell, Long Island University's George Polk Professor of Journalism.
Bolden covered World War II; Harris took thousands of photographs that told the story of a region (western Pennsylvania) in transition; Keith wrote extensively about labor and about Africa when that continent was virtually ignored in the mainstream press; and McKenzie joined the staff in 1941 and for the next ten years wrote about racial discrimination in Pittsburgh.
"For many people all over the country, the Pittsburgh Courier was their local paper because it had so many editions," said Stanley Nelson, who has just finished a documentary on the black press that will air on PBS. "The paper was a real advocate for African Americans and it served to unite African-American communities."
The Pittsburgh Courier turned World War II into a double campaign for many African Americans, as the paper highlighted the sufferings and achievements of black soldiers, and at the same time, demanded that the U.S. end racial segregation and discrimination, according to Howell. Even before World War II, however, the Courier was known for its international coverage. Back in the mid-1930's, Publisher Robert L. Vann sent a correspondent to cover the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. His dispatches inflamed American blacks against the Italian dictator Mussolini.
Coverage of black sports figures was another area in which the Courier excelled. Wendell Smith, the paper's late sports writer, was Jackie Robinson's roommate during Robinson's rookie year with the Dodgers. "We could not depend on the white press to tell us how badly they [whites in general] were treating Jackie Robinson when he broke the color barrier as the first black player in major league baseball," said Bolden. The late Ches Washington was a confidant of boxer Joe Louis during the 1930's even as he extensively covered the "Brown Bomber's" fighting career for the Courier.
"Ironically, the civil rights movement signaled a decline in the fortunes of many black newspapers, including the Pittsburgh Courier," Howell said. "The white press began to pay increasing attention to black news, and in the 1970's they began hiring black reporters and photographers, stealing talent from the black press."
The Courier, founded in 1910, continues publishing today under the name the New Pittsburgh Courier.
In addition to presenting the Career Award to the Pittsburgh Courier, Long Island University also will present the following awards:
Foreign Reporting--Laurie Garrett, Newsday, for "Crumbled Empire, Shattered Health," a series of 25 articles on the public health crisis in the former Soviet Union.
Network TV Reporting--Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz, Prime Time Live, for "Blood Money," an expose of the illegal black market trafficking in human body parts harvested from executed Chinese prisoners and sold in the United States.
Military Affairs Reporting--Dayton Daily News, for "Unnecessary Danger," a series revealing how the military protects and perpetuates incompetent physicians.
Medical Reporting--The Wall Street Journal, for sounding the alarm about popular diet drugs still on the market even though their use had been linked to lethal side effects.
Business Reporting--Kurt Eichenwald and Martin Gottlieb, The New York Times, whose articles on dubious practices at Columbia/HCA, the nation's largest for-private hospital chain, led to indictments, lawsuits and a restructuring of the firm.
National Reporting--Keith Bradsher, The New York Times, for stories on safety and environmental problems posed by sport utility vehicles and light trucks.
Local Reporting--Pensacola News Journal, for "Pensacola's Brownsville Revival: The Money and the Myths," which exposed skullduggery at a local revival.
Environmental Reporting--Will Englund, Gary Cohn, Perry Thorsvik, The Baltimore Sun, for "Shipbreakers," an eye-opening series on environmental and safety hazards faced by poor, untrained workers in a little-noticed global industry.
Book Award--"Requiem," Horst Faas and Tim Page, editors, Random House, a testament to the lives and work of 135 war photographers killed in Southeast Asia.
Sports Reporting--Kansas City Star, for chronicling the National Collegiate Athletic Association's dubious enforcement record and its executives' penchant for perks.
International Reporting--Michael Dobbs, The Washington Post, for documenting the Jewish roots of Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, whose parents hid their past
--even from her--to escape the Nazi persecution that killed much of their family.
Magazine Reporting--Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, for insightful and graceful reflections in dispatches from Paris that achieved the high art of the essay.
Contact: Michele Forsten, director of public relations, 718-488-1015, [email protected]
RSS