Another Giant Falls

I want to take the time to write a tribute and to honor a man I consider my mentor... If not for this man, I might not have wanted to be a journalist....

Mr. Chuck Stone....If you are African-American and of a certain age and from Philadelphia....You read the Daily News.... Why?  The Daily News was smaller and cheaper than the Inquirer and spoke to the poor and the working class in a way the other two papers ,The Bulletin and The Inquirer did not...

If by chance you read the Daily News...You had to have read columns by Mr. Chuck Stone... I consider him the dean of Black journalists...He was in fact the first Black journalist to have a regular column in the Daily News..

I had been reading the Daily News since I was in High School...(It made me feel more like an adult...and I always liked to know things....It made for good conversation...)

After I read the sports column...I had to read his column....He spoke to me and people who looked like me in a way no other columnist did...



Born in St. Louis and raised in Hartford, Chuck trained with the Tuskegee Airmen as a navigator during World War II. Later, he graduated from Wesleyan University and received a Master's from the University of Chicago.

 Chuck Stone's first career was in journalism, where he quickly became a leader in African-American media in New York City, Chicago and as a White House correspondent. To support other emerging writers, he helped create the National Association of Black Journalists, serving as the organization's first president.

  Chuck Stone next worked as a special assistant to Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, writing about that experience in the bookBlack Political Power in America and the novel King Strut. Chuck then became the first Director of Minority Affairs at the Educational Testing Service (ETS), where he studied bias in standardized exams. That position, he always said, led to his early involvement with FairTest.

 As a member of our board of directors, Chuck was distinguished by a non-confrontational, almost courtly, style which made his often-pointed questions even harder to answer. After ETS, he returned to journalism as a columnist at the Philadelphia Daily News.

There, he became nationally known for negotiating the safe surrender of crime suspects sought by our city's notoriously brutal police force.

Widely respected by both law enforcement and community residents, Chuck's unique role earned a flattering profile in the Wall Street Journal and two Pulitzer Prize nominations. After leaving Philadelphia, he held the Walter Spearman Chair in the School of Journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

He passed away a few nights ago.... It is still hard to believe .......If Not for him...There would be no Keith's Space...No Field Negro , and few other blogs in which young blacks speak the truth and fight the good fight...

He showed us how to do it and with dignity...

Rest Well Good Soldier!

Chuck Stone- 1924-2014