SCHOOL DAYS: NABJ held its first convention in Oct. 1976 at Texas Southern University. At the time, Texas Southern had become the first black school of communications in the West and the second in the nation, behind Howard University.

START THE PRESSES: For five years our association functioned without a publication. In the spring of 1981, President Bob Reid launched the NABJ News, an eight-page newsletter. In 1982, it was renamed the NABJ Journal.

HIGHER LEARNING: Keith Thomas, a Florida A&M graduate pursuing post-graduate studies at Northwestern University, was NABJ’s first scholarship winner in 1981. He went on to become a reporter at the Miami Herald, Atlanta Constitution and Tallahassee Democrat. This year, NABJ awarded scholarships to 11 recipients.

ON THE AIR: Myron Lowery, a reporter at WMC-TV in Memphis, where he is now a city councilman, was elected our first vice president-broadcast in 1981, giving NABJ two vice presidents. The other, of course, represents the print constituency.

LET'S GO WEST: The NABJ Board of Directors for the first time holds it' meeting on the West Coast, in Oakland, Calif., in 1984. Six years later, the first West Coast convention is held in Los Angeles.

THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE: In 1985, NABJ stopped doing awards programs at banquets and switched to an Academy Award-like, black-tie event with dramatic video, audio and scripted introductions. The first new-era production was staged at the Morris Mechanic Theater near the redeveloped Baltimore waterfront.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME: Our first permanent national office opened in Nov. 1985 in Reston, Va. The current national office is located in Adelphi, Maryland, just off the College Park campus of the University of Maryland.

CINEMA PARADISIO: Our film festival tradition began in 1986 when Spike Lee, a wily 29-year-old from Brooklyn, screened “She's Gotta Have It” in Dallas. NABJ members also got a sneak preview of “Eyes on the Prize,” Henry Hampton’s civil rights epic.

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY:  In 1989, NABJ topped $1 million in revenues for the first time. In 2003, revenues were $2.1 million.

HARLEM BOUND: Awards Gala attendees took a chartered "A" Train from Midtown Manhattan to the Apollo Theater in 1989.

FIRST STUDENTS ON BOARD: Michelle Battle of Savannah State College became the first student representative on the NABJ Board of Directors. And Roland Martin’s boldness was established long before he grilled President George W. Bush at Unity 2004.  In 1991, Martin became our first student representative with voting power. Though many Board members were skeptical about granting the privilege, Martin’s lobbying on behalf of 500 students succeeded with a 10-7 Board vote.

HAIL TO THE CHIEF: Sidmel Estes-Sumpter, NABJ’S ninth president who served from 1991-1993, was the first woman elected to lead the association. Three of our next five presidents were women.

ONLINE FOR THE FUTURE: 1995 was the year NABJ blasted into cyberspace with its Web site, www.nabj.org. The following summer, conventioneers hung out at the first “CyberSoul Café” in Nashville. Soon, the Listserv, an e-mail bulletin board, began keeping hundreds of members in touch.

OH, CANADA: The Canadian Association of Black Journalists was established in 1996 in Toronto.  Magazine editor Angela Lawrence said the time was right because in three decades her country’s major cities became multiethnic and multicultural, but that reality was not evident in the media. A 1988 regional conference in Rochester, N.Y., introduced NABJ members to Afro-Canadian journalists.

TRAINING OUR OWN: NABJ holds its first Media Institute event, a chapter leadership seminar for about 75 grassroots leaders, at the University of Maryland in January 1998. Created by the NABJ Board in 1997, the Institute is aimed at becoming a training center for black journalists akin to the Poynter and Maynard Institutes.

A FAMILY AFFAIR: Two-generation NABJ families featured in a 1999 NABJ Journal article. They included the Aubespins, Mervin and daughter; the Coxes, Tony and daughter, and the Frasers, C. Gerald and son, daughter.

COMMITMENT: NABJ in 2000 publi hes “Committed to the Cause: A Salute to NABJ’s Presidents,” a 44-page publication about the association’s first quarter century and featuring portraits of and essays about each of its first 12 presidents.

SPECIAL HONORS: The late Homer Smith of the Associated Press and Associated Negro Press is posthumously awarded the first NABJ Legacy Award in 2002. Isaac Peterson of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder takes home the first Emerging Journalist Award in 2003, Talia Buford of Hampton University honored as the first Student Journalist of the Year in 2004, and Dr. Karen Clark of Langston University named the first NABJ Journalism Educator of the Year Award in 2005.