Charlayne Hunter-Gault

Charlayne Hunter-Gault, 1975. Photo: Bernard Gotfryd.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a living connection to this history and a prominent name in television and radio news, worked on the MacNeil/Lehrer Report on PBS starting in 1978, later worked in South Africa for National Public Radio and then CNN. Her work won two Emmys and two Peabody Awards.

She’d made history of her own just to get there, of course. Born in Jim Crow-era segregation in South Carolina in 1942, she and fellow student Hamilton Holmes won a protracted legal battle to become the first African Americans to enroll in the University of Georgia in 1961. While there, she married a fellow student who was white, in contravention of the state’s law forbidding interracial marriages. The state’s governor called them “a shame and a disgrace.” She and Holmes persisted through graduation — she became a journalist and he became an orthopedic surgeon.

This is a fabulous Library of Congress website for free photos and information – go HERE.

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