Trailblazing black reporter who grew up in Youngstown to give YSU commencement address

Trailblazing black reporter who grew up in Youngstown to give YSU commencement address

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Award-winning journalist Simeon Booker, who grew up in Youngstown and has long been considered the “dean” of black journalists, will receive an honorary doctor of letters degree at Youngstown State University’s Fall Commencement at 2 p.m. Dec. 15, in Beeghly Center.

Booker, who retired in 2007 after more than 50 years as Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent for Jet and Ebony magazines, will also give the commencement address.

Born in Baltimore in 1918, Booker moved to Youngstown at the age of 7. His father, S.S. Booker, was secretary of the black branch of the Youngstown YMCA and later pastor of Third Baptist Church. As a youth, Booker submitted articles to The Youngstown Vindicator and covered sports for the Buckeye Review. After high school, he enrolled in Youngstown College, but refused to continue there after learning that black students at the YMCA-sponsored school were not allowed activity cards. His father encouraged him to transfer to his own alma mater, Virginia Union University in Richmond, from which he graduated in 1942.

Booker’s first job was in the city room of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper. Two years later, he joined the Cleveland Call and Post, where he won a Newspaper Guild award for a series on exploitation of slum housing, and a Willkie award for his reporting on racial inequality in Cleveland public schools. In the early 1950s, he became the first black reporter at The Washington Post.