Originally published in The New York Times.
By DANIEL LOVERING
Published: April 29, 2010
At a time when few women worked at newspapers — never mind as reporters handling hard news — Ms. Cunningham covered many of
Originally published in The New York Times.
By DANIEL LOVERING
Published: April 29, 2010
At a time when few women worked at newspapers — never mind as reporters handling hard news — Ms. Cunningham covered many of the civil rights era’s biggest stories, including the battle over school desegregation in Birmingham, Ala., and the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
Starting in 1940, she worked for more than 20 years as a reporter and editor for The Pittsburgh Courier, a black newsweekly with nationwide circulation. Much of that time she worked out of the paper’s New York office.
In the newsroom, she was nicknamed “Big East,” partly because of her height, 5-foot-11 in heels. She also became known as the “lynching editor,” a reference to her reporting on such killings in the segregated South.
“She was a heck of a newspaper gal and played a prominent role with the newspaper,” said Bill Nunn Jr., 84, who worked with Ms. Cunningham at the Pittsburgh headquarters of The Courier and later became the paper’s managing editor. In 1998, The Courier received a George Polk Award for its civil rights coverage, and Ms. Cunningham was am