The 2012 Common Ground Awards Recipients

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is a respected journalist with more than 40 years in the industry.   Between her body of written and broadcast work, and her prominent role in the civil rights movement, Hunter-Gault has consistently led a life dedicated to a more open and inclusive world.

Charlayne Hunter became one of the pioneers who risked their lives to desegregate the colleges and universities of the South when, in January 1961, following two years of efforts by the state of Georgia to deny them admittance, she became one of the first two African-Americans to attend the University of Georgia.

Hunter-Gault is the author of New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa’s Renaissance and In My Place, a memoir of her role in the civil rights movement.  Her new book, To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement, is a retrospective of her involvement with the movement, written for young readers.  She writes that she set about finding a way “to continue the goals of the movement in [her] own way.”

One of television’s premier journalists, Charlayne Hunter-Gault made a success of challenging convention with her fresh insights on issues both close to home and of global impact.  As CNN’s former Johannesburg bureau chief and correspondent, and as NPR’s correspondent in South Africa, Hunter-Gault introduced viewers to the diverse continent of Africa.  She spent 20 years at PBS, as national correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, where she also anchored the award-winning newsmagazine on human rights, Rights and Wrongs.

Hunter-Gault began her career as the first African-American reporter for The New Yorker. A writer known for her “people-centered” journalism, she next served as the Harlem Bureau Chief of The New York Times and has written articles forEssence, Ms., Life, and O, The Oprah Magazine.

The recipient of numerous honors, including two Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards, she writes with the highest standards of objectivity and truth, touching on topics ranging from the life of a 12-year-old heroin addict to the invasion of Grenada and the impact of apartheid in South Africa.