Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a titan of American journalism, just released an anthology of her work, “My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives.” In a recent interview she reflected on her life's work and the ongoing struggles for racial justice.
Donate nowCharlayne Hunter-Gault, a titan of American and New York City journalism, just released an anthology of her work, “My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives.” The title alone should tell you it is no ordinary memoir.
The former Charlayne Hunter, then 18 years old, became the first Black woman to attend the University of Georgia, after winning a desegregation lawsuit in federal court in 1961. Here she smiles as she is interviewed in Athens, Georgia, following her first class in Meigs Hall.But New York wasn’t big enough for Hunter-Gault. She went on to become a national correspondent for "PBS NewsHour" and chief Africa correspondent for NPR, covering the aftermath of apartheid in South Africa.
I thought, uh oh, this was a senior writer at the magazine. I thought, I have really screwed up now. But within a few minutes after I had this encounter, I got a call from Mr. Shawn. He said, “Ms. Hunter, I've read ‘A Hundred-Fifteenth-Between-Lenox-and-Fifth,’ and if it's all right with you, we'd like to put it in the magazine.” I didn't know what to say. If it was “alright with me?” Are you kidding? And that was the second piece.
In the next block [from my office], 126th Street – this was before the state office building – was a bookstore and it was owned by a small Black man who had one of the largest collections by and about Black people in the country actually. All kinds of writers – Black, white, Caribbean – used to go there to go through his books and they would have lectures and talks and so forth.