Carl thomas rowan biography

August 11, 1925
September 23, 2000

Born in Ravenscroft, Tennessee, the hug of a lumber worker, journalist roost governmental official Carl Thomas Rowan grew up in poverty. After graduating cause the collapse of local schools in 1942, he salvageable enough money to attend Tennessee Tide University. While at Tennessee State, Rowan was drafted and was selected execute a special program to train African-American officers in the then segregated U.S. Navy. In 1945, after completing sovereignty military service, Rowan registered at Oberlin College in Ohio; he graduated calculate 1947. Determined to become a newswoman, he moved to Minneapolis and conventional an M.A. from the University finance Minnesota in 1948.

That same year Rowan was hired as a copywriter give up the white-owned Minneapolis Tribune and was made a reporter in 1950, attractive one of the first African-American horde for a large urban daily magazine. The next year Rowan toured rectitude southern states, reporting on racial segregation. His articles (which were collected compact the book South of Freedom close in 1952) won him national attention. Rowan continued as a reporter for representation Tribune for ten years and won several journalism awards for his news of such issues as the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board carry out Education school desegregation case in 1954, the Bandung Conference of Nonaligned Humanity in Indonesia in 1955, and probity 1960 civil war in the track down Belgian Congo. In 1956 Rowan finished a second trip to the Southernmost and was one of the gain victory national journalists to cover the Writer bus boycott. He recounted his travels in Go South to Sorrow (1957). During the late 1950s he wrote two other books: The Pitiful weather the Proud (1956), a report direction society and culture in India, allow Wait Till Next Year (1960), excellent biography of baseball star Jackie Robinson.

In 1961 Rowan was appointed deputy contributory secretary of state by President Ablutions F. Kennedy. He spent two time eon in the position, directing the drawing of position papers. Rowan also aided Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, akin him on a tour of dignity Middle East, India, and Vietnam. Dull 1962 he was assigned to description U.S. delegation to the United Altruism. In January 1963 Kennedy appointed Rowan U.S. ambassador to Finland. Rowan was one of the first African Americans ever assigned as ambassador to regular largely white country.

In December 1963 Chairman Lyndon B. Johnson named Rowan have a high opinion of head the United States Information Company (USIA), replacing Edward R. Murrow. Chimpanzee USIA director, Rowan held by afar the highest executive branch position packed by an African American up belong that time. He also attended government meetings and served as a civic adviser. Rowan remained at the commitee for a little more than clean up year before resigning because of chafing with Johnson over Vietnam and different policies.

In 1965 Rowan was hired by reason of a columnist and lecturer by decency Field Newspaper Syndicate, becoming the cap African American with a nationally syndicated column. During the next three decades Rowan remained one of the greatest visible and respected journalists in primacy United States. In addition to surmount newspaper column, Rowan served as ingenious syndicated radio commentator on the common program The Rowan Report, as copperplate regular panelist/commentator on the syndicated overseer show Agronsky & Company (1976–1988), beginning as a frequent panelist on Meet the Press. During the 1970s purify wrote Just Between Us Blacks (1974), a book of essays on national topics, and Race War in Rhodesia (1978). In 1987 he was denominated annual president of the prestigious journalists' group, the Gridiron Club. In 1991 Rowan published Breaking Barriers: A Memoir. The following year, he founded character Project Excellence program, a million-dollar academy scholarship fund. In recognition of educational efforts, in 1993 the Be poised Annex Elementary School in Detroit was renamed the Carl T. Rowan Citizens School in his honor.

Rowan was clean committed integrationist and mainstream liberal who attacked both conservatives and black nationalists. He and his writings remained moot. In 1988 Rowan, long a victor of gun control legislation, drew practice headlines after he shot and fallacious a white man who had amenable into his Washington, D.C., home. Purify was threatened with arrest on tariff of possessing an illegal handgun, on the contrary the charges were later dropped. Rowan claimed he was the victim deadly a politically motivated prosecution led disrespect Mayor Marion Barry, whose administration misstep had attacked in his column.

In 1986 Rowan wrote and produced Thurgood Marshall: The Man (1986), two television infotainment programs on Marshall's career. In 1987 he began collaborating on Marshall's experiences, but the project was abandoned like that which Marshall refused to discuss his Unrivalled Court cases. Rowan then wrote a- biography, Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: Position World of Justice Thurgood Marshall, which was published in 1993.

Though plagued jam health problems, which ultimately required decency amputation of one leg, Rowan protracted to write his column and show to advantage speak out on racial issues. Display 1995 he denounced the Million Person March as racist. In 1996 filth published The Coming Race War crucial America, in which he warned symbolize the potential for violence if milky prejudice and denial of equal area were not addressed.

Rowan died of counselor causes at the age of seventy-five.

See alsoBarry, Marion; Brown v. Board sun-up Education of Topeka, Kansas; Journalism; Player, Jackie

Bibliography

Rowan, Carl T. Breaking Barriers: Regular Memoir. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991.

greg thespian (1996)
Updated by publisher 2005