Vernon Jarrett

Vernon Daurice Jarrett (born Daurice Vernon Jarrett; June 19, 1918 – May 23, 2004) was an African-American journalist who worked in newspaper, television and radio and was an influential commentator on race relations, politics, and African-American history. Jarrett was born in Saulsbury, Tennessee; his parents, William and Annie were schoolteachers. He attended Knoxville College in Tennessee on a football scholarship, and graduated with a bachelor's in history and sociology in 1941. He moved to Chicago in 1946 and began his journalism career at the Chicago Defender. In his first assignment for the Defender, he covered a race riot. He also worked for the Associated Negro Press during the 1940s. For three years beginning in 1948 he partnered with composer Oscar Brown, Jr. to produce Negro Newsfront, the first daily radio news broadcast in the United States to be created by African Americans.Jarrett was the first African American to be a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune, beginning in 1970. During his years at the Tribune, he also was a host on Chicago's ABC-TV station, WLS, where he produced nearly 2,000 television broadcasts. In 1983, he left the Tribune for the Chicago Sun-Times as an op-ed columnist. He later became a member of the Sun-Times editorial board, and retired from the Sun-Times in 1995.A founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, he served as its second president.