Carole Simpson
*Carole Simpson was born on this date in 1941. She is a Black media broadcast journalist, news anchor, and author. Carole Estelle Simpson was born in Chicago, Illinois. At a young age, she became involved in drama in elementary and high school, training her to articulate and project her voice for media.
1958, Simpson graduated from high school and attended the University of Illinois. Simpson, a graduate of the University of Michigan, began her career on radio at WCFL in Chicago, Illinois, and was later hired at WBBM. She moved to television at Chicago's WMAQ and onto NBC News in 1975, becoming the first Black woman to anchor a major American network newscast.
Simpson joined ABC News in 1982 and was an anchor for the weekend edition of World News Tonight from 1988 until October 2003. In 1992, she became the first non-white woman to moderate a presidential debate, facilitating the debate between George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot in Richmond, Virginia. She received the Journalist of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.
She retired from ABC News in 2006 to begin teaching journalism at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, where she taught until 2019. In 2010, her autobiography, Newslady, was published. She is a cousin of sportswriter and ESPN commentator Michael Wilbon. Simpson is a former Radio Television Digital News Foundation Board of Trustees member and an affiliate of the Radio Television Digital News Association. There, she established the Carole Simpson Scholarship to encourage and help non-white students overcome hurdles along their career path, offered annually to hopeful journalists. Simpson is on the Advisory Council at the International Women's Media Foundation.
