1937-2004
Claiming an Education: Early Black American Humanists
Black Journalists Lead at Prestigious Institutions
Alvin Adams
Several prominent Black journalists began their careers at Ohio University. One of the first Black graduates of the university’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism was Alvin C. Adams, Jr., who grew up only a few miles from the Athens campus and earned his journalism degree there in 1959. He then went on to work at two of the nation’s most prestigious Black institutions, the Chicago Defender and the Johnson Publishing Co. Adams Residence Hall on the Athens campus is named in his honor.
Clarence Page
A decade after Adams’s graduation from Ohio University, Clarence Page from Dayton, Ohio, earned his degree from the School of Journalism and shortly thereafter began an illustrious career at The Chicago Tribune. As a syndicated columnist at the Tribune, Page became a popular panelist on television news programs such as the McLaughlin Group and The PBS News Hour, and in 1989 he earned the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.
Eddith Dashiell
The tradition of Black journalism at Ohio University also includes publication of a student newspaper, Afro-American Affairs (1970-1982), which covered issues of interest to Black students, faculty, and staff. The current director of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Dr. Eddith Dashiell, is both the first woman and the first Black American to hold that position.