The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) held it’s annual Black Press Week in Washington, D.C. from March 13-15. Pictured above exchanging information and ideas are Harvard Law Professor Charles J. Ogletree, who served as a panelists for the National Press Club Luncheon and who was also honored during the week’s events with the NNPA Black Press Week with a Legal and Civil Rights Award, Atty. Gloria Browne-Marshall, The Milwaukee Courier’s correspondent for The U.S. Supreme Court and an associate professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College in New York City and Jackie Hampton, publisher of The Mississippi Link newspaper.
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – White House adviser Valerie Jarrett has been named the National Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation’s “Newsmaker of the Year.”
Jarrett was presented the award last week during NNPAF’s annual Black Press Week celebration in Washington, D.C.
Former North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue was given a Torch Award for summoning the courage to issue pardons of innocence to the Wilmington Ten, activists imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.
Enshrined posthumously into the NNPA Publishers Hall of Fame were Joseph L. Coley, Sr. of the Bakersfield News Obsever and Virginia Lucille Johnson-Tate of the Northwest Dispatch in Tacoma, Washington.
Other awards presented were:
Lifetime Achievement – Maulana Karenga, creator of Kwanzaa and chair of Africana Studies at California State University-Long Beach.
Community Empowerment – Susan L. Taylor, CEO of National Cares Mentoring Movement and former editor-in-chief of Essence magazine.
Political Achievement – Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson
Legal and Civil Rights – Attorneys Irving L. Joyner and James E. Ferguson II (attorneys for the Wilmington Ten) and Harvard Law Professor Charles J. Ogletree
Corporate Support and Recognition – Nielsen, General Motors and Macy’s
Susan Taylor said, “Even with all the evidence that we present to potential advertisers, still it’s a struggle to attract our fair share of those dollars.”
In accepting his award, Professor Ogletree said: “We cannot survive without the Black Press. No one else will tell our story, no one else will understand what we’ve gone through, no one will understand how much we have achieved and no one will understand how far we still have to go if it were not for NNPA and the Black Press.”
He added, “We would not be who we are, where we are and do what we do if not for the Black Press lifting us up.”
