By MAYA CARPENTER
The UNITY News

Not every journalist can stand up at a press association meeting with a 20-minute speaking limit and get away with speaking for an hour and 15 minutes.

The late veteran journalist Vernon Jarrett did.

Jarrett, who died in 2004, was at a meeting in Minnesota and didn’t care that he went over his time because he had things to say, recalled Reginald Stuart, a corporate recruiter for the McClatchy Co.

“He was not one who yielded much,” said Stuart, a Nashville native and close friend of Jarrett, who was born in Memphis.

Jarrett, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, as well as a founder and second president of NABJ, had a distinct voice in telling stories.

“He had a sharp tongue – like a razor’s edge,” said Greg Morrison, a CNN assignment editor.

In 1983, he became an op-ed columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. In 1977, Jarrett founded the Afro-Academic Cultural Technological and Scientific Olympics, designed to be a support group to young black academic people.

“He understood the power of the press,” Stuart said.

Jarrett, along with three other pioneer journalists – Belva Davis, Charlie Cobb and Les Payne – were inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame banquet Thursday in the Grand Ballroom of the McCormick Place West.

They were honored for making a mark in the journalism industry, not only for their efforts as journalists but for their efforts to be influential black journalists.

“Can you believe it’s almost been four years since his passing?” said Davis, president of the board of the San Francisco Museum of the African Diaspora to the banquet crowd. “It doesn’t feel like an NABJ convention without Vernon here,” she said.

Jarrett was 84 when he died of cancer, and many journalists say he played a major role in their career. Les Payne, a Newsday columnist, said Jarrett was like no other and never backed down from a chance to speak his mind.

Payne said that if Jarrett were alive, he would have never had a one-minute time limit.

Like the journalists who were inducted, Jarrett showed that he was not to be taken lightly as a black journalist. He was a journalist who was active in educating black people and in 1978; he was able to get black journalists to meet President Jimmy Carter, explained Wayne Dawkins, assistant professor at Hampton University.

Jarrett was a person who had a responsibility to be a reporter first, Dawkins said.

Along with Jarrett, the president’s award was presented during the NABJ ceremony to:
-Belva Davis, president of the San Francisco Museum of the African Diaspora board
-Charlie Cobb, visiting professor of Africana Studies at Brown University and a founder,
senior writer and diplomatic correspondent for AllAfrica.com
-Les Payne, Newsday columnist
-Roland Martin, multimedia journalist

topic: UNITY Convention
tags: Chicago Sun-Times, columnist, vernon jarrett

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