Last year, I thought that I would start a new series on the blog titled “I Wish I Knew More About…” as a way to catalog information that interests me but don’t have the time to explore. I wrote about Emma J. Atkinson then. At the time, I mentioned that I didn’t know if I would keep up with the idea. I didn’t.

Today, however, I wish that I knew more about a pioneering black journalist and activist named Evelyn Cunningham (incidentally her “Wikipedia page is paltry). I am stunned to learn that no one has yet written a book about this extraordinary woman’s life and her accomplishments. She passed away in 2010 at the age of 94. She was a friend of Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall, and many others. A feminist before it was cool, she covered the rise of Dr. King in the black freedom movement as well as Malcolm X and others. She was a columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier for 20 years. She was nicknamed the “lynching editor” because she was relentless in covering “hard news.”

Listen to her talk about this in her own words:

While reporting in Birmingham and other places during the black freedom movement, Ms. Cunningham was jailed and harassed. An article in the Amsterdam News from 1990 captures a bit of her indomitable spirit.

I really hope to read a biography about her soon…