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Updated: Monday, December 24, 2007 Published: Wednesday, July 28, 2004

RELATED LINKS Committed to the Cause Foreword Foreword from the 1st Edition Chuck Stone Vernon Jarrett Bob Reid Les Payne Merv Aubespin Al Fitzpatrick DeWayne Wickham Thomas Morgan III Sidmel Estes-Sumpter Arthur Fennell Vanessa Williams William W. Sutton, Jr. Condace Pressley Herbert Lowe Jr. Remembering Vernon Jarrett (1918-2004) CREDITS Publisher Herbert Lowe Editors Jack E. White Lynn Norment Photo Editors Fred Sweets Hillery Shay Copy Editor Mira Lowe Researcher Wayne Dawkins Design & Layout Nicole Sherman Print Source & Maria A. Newman NABJ Marketing & Publications Manager & Wanda Ng Big Fish Communications Executive Director Tangie Newborn SPECIAL THANKS to Knight Ridder and the Lexington Herald-Leader for their support of this publication.

Like her predecessors, she had been a pioneer in her newsroom, the first black woman reporter at The Washington Post. By the time she took the helm of NABJ, its challenge, in her view, had broadened: From enlarging the African-American presence in the news media to mounting an all-encompassing, often controversial push for inclusion in the newsrooms of Hispanic, Asian and Native American journalists.

Everyone had a story to tell, she believed, and black journalists had a responsibility to champion their right to tell it.

Her stance would provoke intense debate within NABJ - but grabbing onto a fight was almost second nature for Gilliam, the daughter of an A.M.E. minister who grew up in segregated Memphis and Louisville. Early on she committed herself to journalism, starting at the Louisville Defender, then Jet magazine - then to The Post, where for almost 33 years she has been a strong voice and magnetic presence as a reporter, editor and columnist. She now is director of the Young Journalists Development Project, an in-house partnership with local schools.

Bringing other minorities into the news business, and fighting for multi-dimensional portrayals of all minorities has long been one of Gilliam's passions.

In the mid-1970s she joined the board of The Institute for Journalism Education (IJE), an organization founded by Robert C. Maynard, Nancy Hicks and others to train minorities for reporting and editing jobs. IJE immediately set out to persuade the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) to make editorial staffs reflect the nation's diversity by 2000. Gilliam served as IJE board chairman for eight years.

A tall, striking woman, Gilliam knew how to use her prominence as a journalist to further NABJ's goals.

"She was an icon among the print members, and she was an icon in the industry," observes Sidmel Estes-Sumpter, who preceded Gilliam as president. "She was able to open doors to news executives who knew and respected her as an icon."

Gilliam had also developed her own strong voice.

"One of the transformations of my career and life was column writing," says Gilliam. "I was going from objectivity to the new journalism, which demands expressing an opinion in column writing. My voice emerged and my issues emerged - race, education, African-American achievement, media and politics."

As NABJ's print task force chairman in 1991-92, Gilliam supervised "L.A. Unrest and Beyond," the survey of African-American journalists' views about the urban disturbances that broke out after the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King.

As vice president-print, she helped organize protests against the New York Daily News when it fired two-thirds of its African-American reporters, including all the black male reporters. She also coordinated "Muted Voices," the first survey that detailed the crisis confronting mid-career black journalists who felt stuck and disrespected in their newsrooms.

As NABJ president, she had a long list of objectives - securing new funding for the organization, ensuring members were on the cutting edge of digital technology, boosting the number of African-American managers on both the editorial and business side, and mentoring young journalists.

Yet the main preoccupation of her presidency became preparation for the 1994 Unity convention, the first-ever joint meeting of African American, Hispanic, Native American and Asian American journalists.

There were fierce debates about NABJ's role in Unity.

Some felt that NABJ should not dilute its strength as the largest faction by joining with the others. Others felt that Hispanic and Asian journalists were making headway at blacks' expense.

There were deep-seated historical differences with the other groups. The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) threatened to pull out of the confab. The Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) group resented locating the meeting in Atlanta in part because of the lingering racism of the Atlanta Braves insignia.

Gilliam's strategy was to get everyone to talk. She convinced the McCormick Foundation that a retreat with each group's representatives would iron out differences. After wrestling personally with these issues for more than a decade, Gilliam was convinced there were much common ground among the groups.

"It had taken a lot of work to bring me to the place of accepting diversity as a focus of my energy. Bob Maynard had always thought it was important to work through and forge relationships and find common issues," says Gilliam. "Later in Unity I saw the attitudes I had in the 1970s. But by that point I had worked through the emotional, historic and intellectual issues and saw the need for Unity."

When Unity was over, Gilliam says she had renewed respect for her colleagues.

"I came away with so much respect for black journalists. The understanding of what this country is about, that we have to be strong as individuals but yet participate in coalitions."

The Gilliam years, she had hoped, would also be a time for reflection on the organization's objectives and achievements, especially at the 20th anniversary convention in Philadelphia.

But the contemplative tone she wanted to set was almost derailed by public fights over whether the group should take a position on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The founding member of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists was charged with murder of a white police officer and condemned to death after a controversial trial.

Securing a new trial for Abu-Jamal became a heated cause for some NABJ members. Others believed just as passionately that such advocacy was inappropriate for a journalistic organization. After intense debate, the NABJ board decided in executive session to take no stand on the matter, which led some critics to charge that NABJ's leadership was out of touch with black folk. In the aftermath Gilliam commissioned a report about the debate, but it was never released due to a disagreement within the board.

In this episode and others, some thought Gilliam was too much a lady, a Southern lady at that, too prone to compromise when she met opposition. Looking back, Gilliam acknowledges that her term did bring "me face to face with my weaknesses and strengths. As a preacher's daughter I had never thought about kicking ass publicly. I had respect for people. And my style was not in-your-face enough for some people."

But there is no doubt that Gilliam's quiet strengths enhanced NABJ's institutional stability.

Under her leadership, the organization received grants from the Ford Foundation, the Freedom Forum, and the McCormick Foundation, funding programs that gave black journalists more tools to compete in an increasingly competitive industry.

"I left an organization that was financially healthy. We earned money from Unity and Philadelphia," she says.

The controversies that flared during her tenure, she says, provided a learning experience, however painful, that did not dim her optimism or her passion for change.

"NABJ will put you on your knees in prayer," she says, "and that's a good place to be."

Jacqueline E. Trescott is a staff writer for the Style section of The Washington Post.