fbpx
Connect with us

Black History

NPR: Simeon Booker, Dean Of Washington’s Black Press Corps, Dies At 99

Published

on

Simeon Booker, the Washington bureau chief of Jet and Ebony magazines for five decades, died Dec. 10 at an assisted-living community in Solomons, Md., according to The Washington Post. He was 99 and had recently been hospitalized for pneumonia, his wife, Carol Booker, told the paper.

Booker was the first full-time black reporter for The Post. The paper says “few reporters risked more to chronicle the civil rights movement than Mr. Booker.”

Simeon Booker talks about covering the Emmett Till trial in Mississippi in 1955. (BlackBooksandReviews/YouTube.com)

Booker is credited with helping to deliver the story of Emmitt Till’s murder to a national audience. In 1955, the boy from Chicago was tortured, and shot and killed while visiting relatives in Mississippi. He was accused of having whistled at a white woman.

Simeon Booker, reporter for JET and Ebony gives his account of the Civil Rights Movement. (BlackBooksandReviews/YouTube.com)

Jet magazine published the photos of Till in the open casket. In 2013, NPR’s Michel Martin asked Booker how difficult a decision it was for the magazine to go forward with those photographs.

“That was a very difficult decision for them because I don’t think they were in it, and they didn’t realize the seriousness of it. But going down there and seeing all the turmoil, I knew what was coming up,” Booker said.

Read more at NPR.org.

Freddie Allen is the Editor-In-Chief of the NNPA Newswire and BlackPressUSA.com. Focused on Black people stuff, positively. You should follow Freddie on Twitter and Instagram @freddieallenjr.

SIGN UP TO RECEIVE NEWS UPDATES IN YOUR INBOX


Sign up to receive the latest news in your inbox

* indicates required

Like BlackPressUSA on Facebook

Advertisement

Advertise on BlackPressUSA

advertise with blackpressusa.com