Bio
Belva Davis
Broadcast journalist Belva Davis was born on October 13, 1932. She attended Berkeley High in Berkeley, California, graduating in 1951. She was accepted at San Francisco State University. However, her family could not afford the tuition and Davis began working at the Naval Supply Center in Oakland.
Davis's first paid writing job was as a freelance writer for Jet. She soon found work with several weekly black newspapers, including the Bay Area Independent and the San Francisco Sun-Reporter. Davis' career in broadcasting began at radio station KSAN, where she read newspaper clips on the air, becoming the first black female at the station. Davis left KSAN to work for another radio station, KDIA. Here she had a regular two-hour radio show which featured music, studio interviews and political coverage.
In 1966, Davis was hired to replace television news anchor Nancy Reynolds on KPIX-TV, San Francisco's CBS affiliate. This made Davis the first female African American television reporter on the West Coast. Davis also hosted and helped to create All Together Now, one of the country's first primetime public affairs programs, to focus on ethnic communities. In 1977, she left KPIX to work at the PBS affiliate in San Francisco, KQED. She anchored A Closer Look and thenEvening Edition from 1977 to 1981. She next took a job as anchor and urban affairs specialist for KRON-4, where she worked full time until 1999, when she became a special projects reporter for the television station.
Davis has received countless awards for her contributions to the field of journalism. These awards include national recognition from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, San Francisco State University and the National Education Writers Association. She received the Northern California Chapter of National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' highest lifetime achievement award, the Governor's Award, in 1996. Davis is also well known for her work as a labor activist, vice president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and for being active within the community.
Jodi Kantor
Jodi Kantor began her journalism career by dropping out of Harvard Law School to join Slate.com in 1998. Four years later she became the Arts & Leisure editor of the New York Times, the youngest person in memory to edit a section of the newspaper. She has been covering the Obamas since 2007, writing about their faith, friends,marriage, roots, and family, among other topics. Jodi is a recipient of a Columbia Young Alumni Achievement Award, was named to Crain’s “Forty Under Forty” list of New Yorkers, and appears regularly on television. Though she is a Washington correspondent for the Times, she lives in Brooklyn with her family.
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Encyclopædia Britannica Article
- Obama, Barack
(born Aug. 4, 1961, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.) 44th president of the U.S. (2009– ). Obama graduated from Columbia University (1983) and Harvard Law School (1991), where he was the first African American to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review. He moved to Chicago, where he served as a community organizer and lectured in constitutional law at the University of Chicago before he was elected (1996) to the Illinois Senate as a member of the Democratic Party. In 2004 he was elected to the U.S. Senate and quickly became a major national political figure. In 2008 Obama won an upset victory over former U.S. first lady Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic presidential nominee. He easily defeated Republican candidate John McCain and became the first African American president. In 2009 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
- Obama, Barack on britannica.com
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