The Role Model: Melba Tolliver was the first
black person to anchor a network news program, at WABC-TV in New York. The
day before she was supposed to cover Tricia Nixon’s wedding, she got an
Afro. Her bosses said it was a “radical” hairstyle and took her off the
air. I was nine at the time, and my mother made the mistake of letting me
go to the beauty shop by myself. I came back with a ’fro because of Melba.
I still remember my mother going, “Oh, Lord Jesus!” I saw Melba years
later at a journalism convention, and what was she wearing? A Mohawk. But
I wasn’t tempted to follow her there.
The Example Set by Her Parents: My parents
were always reading—they wouldn’t think of getting on the subway without a
newspaper—and they didn’t restrict what we read. I read The
Exorcist and didn’t sleep for days. I was terrified. But my parents’
attitude was “If there’s something you don’t understand, you’ll tell us,
you’ll ask.” That’s something that carries with you as a journalist—that
if you don’t understand something, you ask.
The Words of Wisdom: Anita Hill said to me,
“You can be healed, but you’re never the same.” My brother, a firefighter,
tragically took his own life two years ago. I think about him all the
time. His death connected me with millions of other people who’ve been
through this. I see them and understand them in ways I never had
before.
