NewsLady is the memoir of a trailblazing African American woman journalist whose life is about "firsts" Carole Simpson was the first woman to broadcast radio news in Chicago, the first African American woman to anchor a local newscast in the same city, the first African American woman national network television correspondent, the first African American woman to anchor a national network newscast and the first woman or minority to moderate a presidential debate. Hers is a story of survival in a male-dominated profession that placed the highest premium on white males. In this book she recounts how she endured and conquered sex discrimination and racial prejudice to reach the top ranks of her profession. Along the way she covered some of the most important news events over the four decades of her illustrious broadcasting career. Her inspirational story is for all trying to succeed in a corporate environment.

NewsLady

By CAROLE SIMPSON

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Carole Simpson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-6235-8

Contents

Prologue...............................................................xiChapter 1. Time to Go..................................................1Chapter 2. Becoming Me.................................................5Chapter 3. A Child's Eye View of Racism................................13Chapter 4. The "Colored" Lois Lane.....................................21Chapter 5. From the Urban North to the Rural South.....................31Chapter 6. Take Me Back to Chicago.....................................41Chapter 7. I Am Woman..................................................49Chapter 8. Dr. Martin Luther King Gives Me a Boost.....................61Chapter 9. Black, Female and Pregnant..................................69Chapter 10. Ms. Simpson Goes to Washington.............................81Chapter 11. The NBC Push to ABC........................................93Chapter 12. ABC Newswomen vsABC Newsmen................................103Chapter 13. Max Robinson...............................................121Chapter 14. All My Skinfolk Ain't My Kinfolk...........................125Chapter 15. NewsLady to AnchorLady.....................................135Chapter 16. Reporting on "The Other America"...........................145Chapter 17. Cry, The Reviled Country...................................169Chapter 18. In To Africa...............................................185Chapter 19. The Double Whammy..........................................195Chapter 20. The 1992 Presidential Debate...............................205Chapter 21. Death Threats..............................................217Chapter 22. Letters. I Got Letters.....................................223Chapter 23. Having It All..............................................235Chapter 24. What's Wrong With Me?......................................247Chapter 25. My Fall From Grace.........................................253Chapter 26. Paying The Price...........................................263Chapter 27. The Anthrax Debacle........................................271Chapter 28. The Newslady is Banished...................................285Chapter 29. Older, Wiser and Happier...................................291Chapter 30. Take-Aways.................................................297Epilogue...............................................................299

Chapter One

TIME TO GO

How did it come to this? It's 2:20 in the morning on March 19, 2003, a beautiful balmy night. I stood alone on a seventh floor balcony of Washington's historic Hay Adams Hotel. Gazing across Lafayette Park I can see the darkened White House, the Washington Monument looming majestically behind it. My eyes welled with tears.

At this very moment tens of thousands of U.S. troops were engaged in the ballyhooed "shock and awe" bombing attacks and troop invasion of Iraq, sent there by President George W. Bush to annihilate Saddam Hussein and "liberate" the Iraqi people. I was weeping about the start of another war, and I was weeping for myself.

Although a Senior Correspondent and longtime Weekend News Anchor, ABC News assigned me to watch the White House from nine at night until nine the next morning. My assignment was to call the news desk and tell everybody if terrorists blew up the White House. It was a job, no doubt, one of our youngest and most inexperienced desk assistants could have managed, and I had to beg for this assignment.

At the time I had been a broadcast journalist for thirty-seven years; the last fifteen spent anchoring ABC's World News Tonight Saturday and Sunday, while still covering stories for other news programs. I was the first African American woman to anchor an evening newscast for one of the major television networks. And I had a big following. I received virtually every award presented to journalists and African Americans for professional excellence. I had spent the past twenty years being an outspoken advocate for diversity in the nation's newsrooms, with particular emphasis on women, and people of color.

But why was I here, now? On this night, on that balcony I suspected that I was given such a lowly assignment because I had become a nobody. Everybody says I don't look or act my age, but I am among Americans in the least desirable demographic for television advertisers: over fifty-four. Add my color and sex, and apparently, no matter how good I may look, how good I feel, how enthusiastic I am about the news, my star had fallen.

It seemed to me that I was now dispensable. ABC's planning of the Iraqi war coverage took six months. As our military forces were building up in the Middle East, our producers, anchors, and correspondents were receiving their assignments. Not only was there none for me, the executives decided I couldn't even handle anchoring my Sunday night show during our important war coverage. When I demanded an official explanation, I was told that the executives wanted to try out some of the newer correspondents to see if—in five to ten years-they could become credible anchors.

But the scuttlebutt was I was no longer good enough to "go live." Since when? A person who has spent her life in front of cameras, microphones, and live audiences, is all of sudden no longer capable?

So, for the first ten days of one of the biggest news stories in recent history, I had nothing to do. It seemed all the other correspondents and anchors were assigned to some special show, some special story, some special event, or some prime time documentary. But not the only African American anchor.

During those early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I reported for work everyday seething. I watched all the coverage and read everything in the newspapers and magazines, thinking that, at least if I were ever needed, I would be prepared. All my "boning up" was for naught. There was never an urgent call or email saying, "Carole, we need you to do ..."

It was during that dark hour, on the balcony of the Hay Adams, that I decided I could not, would not, allow anyone to insult my work. Despite the years of struggle to prove myself as good as a white man, white woman, or black man, I surrendered. I was tired of fighting. It was time to leave a career that I loved. The triple pressures of being, female, black and older-had finally taken their toll.

Chapter Two

BECOMING ME

I don't know for sure when I was born. My birth certificate says December 7, 1940. But my mother told me she was in labor with me when news of the Japanese aerial attacks on U.S. Navy ships moored in Pearl Harbor, blared from the radio striking much more fear in her than my impending Caesarean birth. One of my aunts was with her and swears she heard the same alarming reports from the hallways of St. Luke's hospital in Chicago. In all the excitement, were the nurses so nervous they put down the wrong year on birth record? I would like to think so.

I always preferred the Pearl Harbor date. It made me a year younger and I would have been born on the day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called, "a day that will live in infamy." I always had a flair for the dramatic. But that official 1940 birth certificate date follows me. I always want to correct it with, "Hey, I was really born in 1941."

Although I took my first breath in Chicago, I always felt that my roots sprang from the South. My mother, Doretha Viola Wilbon, was born in the small rural town of Washington, Georgia. Her father was a white man, one of the sons of the richest man in town, Pembroke Pope....