Jun 22, 2006
Reception: Book Launch for New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa’s Renaissance
AAI celebrated the release of Charlayne Hunter-Gault’s new book, New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa’s Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 2006), with an intimate reception at the New York City home of AAI Trustee Nadine Hack. The reception was packed with friends of AAI and Ms. Hunter-Gault, who has a long-standing relationship AAI. In 2000, she was the first recipient of the Africa-America Institute’s Chairman’s Award for Excellence in Media for balanced reporting on Africa directed primarily at an American audience. Ms. Hunter-Gault was the Master of Ceremonies at AAI’s Annual Awards Galas in 2005 and 2006.
Ms. Hunter-Gault has been a journalist for more than 40 years and has worked in every journalistic medium. She has received numerous awards for her reporting in general, and specifically for her coverage of Africa. In 1985, she received broadcast journalism's highest award--a George Foster Peabody for her 1985 five-part MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour series, “Apartheid's People.” Hunter-Gault earned another Peabody in 1998 for her overall coverage of Africa for National Public Radio (NPR).
Hunter-Gault has lived in Africa since 1997, working as Chief Africa Correspondent for National Public Radio, based in Johannesburg, and later as Johannesburg Bureau Chief for CNN, a position she held until 2005, when she left to pursue independent journalistic projects, including reporting on the continent for NPR as a special correspondent. She is the author of In My Place , a personal memoir of the Civil Rights Movement and her own role in it as the first black woman to attend the University of Georgia.