Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Douglas A. Blackmon will deliver the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture on Jan. 19 at the Vanderbilt Law School. The event, which is free and open to the public, is scheduled for 3:30 pm in Flynn Auditorium.
The title of his talk is, “A Persistent Past: Reckoning with Race and History in the Age of Obama.”
Blackmon, bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal in Atlanta, was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (Doubleday). The book began with an article Blackmon wrote for the Journal revealing that U.S. Steel had relied on forced black laborers in Alabama coal mines in the early 20th century.
The National Association of Black Journalists recognized Blackmon in 2000 for his articles shedding light on J.P. Morgan & Co.’s practice of allegedly funneling funds between a wealthy Northern white supremacist and segregationists in the South during the 1960s.
As bureau chief, he manages the paper’s coverage of airlines and other major transportation companies and publicly traded companies and institutions based in the South.
Blackmon joined the Journal in October 1995 as a reporter in Atlanta. He previously covered race and politics for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Special assignments included the fall of the Berlin Wall and the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Previously, he was a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat, managing editor of the Daily Record in Little Rock, Ark., and a writer for weekly newspapers. Blackmon penned his first newspaper story at the age of 12, for the Progress in his hometown of Leland, Miss.
Media contact: Jennifer Johnston (615) 322-NEWS
jennifer.johnston@vanderbilt.edu