Charlotta Amanda Spears Bass
Toni Hall
Fay M. Jackson
Fred Anthony Smith
Leanard Pitts Jr.
Pat Means
Linda Johnson Rice
Danny Bakewell Jr.
Charlotta Amanda Spears Bass
Charlotta Amanda Spears Bass (1874-1969) is an American Hero who is best known for owning and running the “California Eagle,” an African-American centered publication.
She was likely the first African American woman to own and operate a newspaper in the United States. In 1952, she became the first African American woman nominated for Vice President.
Charlotta Amanda Spears Bass was an American educator, newspaper publisher-editor, and civil rights activist. She also focused on various other issues such as housing rights, voting rights, and labor rights, as well as police brutality and harassment
Toni Hall
Houston native Toni Hall is an alumna of the Historically Black University Prairie View A&M University. She graduated from USC Annenberg’s Masters of Specialized Journalism in Entertainment and Sports program in 2021. She has worked as a production assistant at Fox Sports and is currently based in New York as the Player Content Coordinator of the NFL.
Fay M. Jackson
Fay M. Jackson launched a news weekly in 1928 called Flash and wrote a column featured in over 200 newspapers around the United States. Jackson was the first credentialed black Hollywood correspondent, also covering domestic and international politics and cultural topics. A charter member of the Upsilon chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., she was mentored by Charlotte Bass and Claude Albert Barnett.
Fred Anthony Smith
Smith graduated from USC in 2002 with a bachelors degree in Film/Cinemas/ Video Studios
An award-winning television professional with over 15 years experience developing, writing, directing, producing, and editing original short-form and long-form content for television and the web. Over the course of his career, he has produced a number of projects featuring some of the sport's brightest stars, sharing their stories in unique and innovative ways. After working for the NFl for over 16 years he is currently the vice president of nonscripted at SMAC entertainment.
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Leonard Pitts Jr. Pitts entered USC at the age of 15 in 1973 and began his career three years later as a writer for SOUL, a nationally distributed Black entertainment tabloid. Over the next several years, he worked as a freelance writer for many publications, including TV Guide and Parenting, as well as a staff writer for Casey Kasem’s radio countdown program, Casey’s Top 40. Pitts joined the Miami Herald in 1991 as its pop music critic and was given his own general-interest column in 1994. It proved so popular that it won national syndication three years later.
Pitts was awarded the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary and is a three-time recipient of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Award of Excellence. He was chosen NABJ’s 2008 Journalist of the Year and is a five-time recipient of the Atlantic City Press Club’s National Headliners Award, and a seven-time recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Green Eyeshade Award. In 2001, Pitts received the American Society of Newspaper Editors prestigious ASNE Award for Commentary Writing, and was named Feature of the Year – Columnist by Editor & Publisher. In 2002, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists gave Pitts its inaugural Columnist of the Year award. In 2016, the organization named him to its Hall of Fame. Pitts retired from the Miami Herald in 2023.
Danny Bakewell Jr.
Danny J. Bakewell, Jr. serves as the executive editor and chief of staff of the Los Angeles Sentinel, the largest African American owned and operated newspaper west of the Mississippi, The Los Angeles Watts Times and WBOK Radio in New Orleans, Louisiana (the only talk radio station in the South dedicated totally to issues which affect the African American community). The Sentinel and the Watts Times each have a circulation base of over 250,000 weekly readers, and WBOK has a listening audience of over 100,000 as well as a major web presence with lasentinel.net, lawattstimes.com and wbok1230am.com.
Danny Jr. is a board member of the USC Black Alumni Association, a Life Member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc. (Pasadena Alumni Chapter). He was recently appointed as the Political Action Chairman of the fraternity for the Western Region. He is also a Life Member of the NAACP and a board member of Sabriya’s Castle of Fun and the United Negro College Fund (Los Angeles).
Pat Means
Pat Means was the co-founder and owner of Turning Point Magazine after the 1992 uprising in Los Angeles, addressing the lack of positive portrayals of African Americans in media. The publication catered to influential African Americans in California, until it expanded service to a national audience in 2001. She was an established entrepreneur and small business specialist.
Linda Johnson Rice
Linda Johnson Rice was the former CEO and chairwoman of Johnson Publishing Company, the publishers Ebony and Jet Magazine, the first African American female CEO among the top five Black Enterprise 100 largest black-owned companies. Linda has also held the positions of president, vice president, chief operating officer, assistant to the publisher and fashion coordinator of Ebony magazine and fashion fair within the corporation founded by her father, John H. Johnson. As the no.1 African American publishing company in the world, Johnson publishing owns Fashion Fair Cosmetics, no.1 in the world for makeup and skin care products for women of color, and Ebony Fashion Fair, the world’s largest traveling fashion show.
Marc Brown
An American television news anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles. Brown co-anchors the station's Eyewitness News HD newscasts at 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. with Michelle Tuzee. Brown has earned four Emmy Awards, a Golden Mike, an Associated Press and a Radio and Television News Director Association award. He earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in Broadcast Journalism and Political Science from the University of Southern California.