Looking back

By Erika Alexander and Sojourner Marable
Clark-Atlanta University
Atlanta, Georgia

ATHENS, Georgia (CNNSB) -- At the height of the civil rights movement, a young Charlayne Hunter-Gault was stunned by the racism she saw and experienced at the University of Georgia. Now those days are just history to her.

In January of 1961, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes became the first two African-Americans to attend the University of Georgia, overcoming two years of efforts by state officials to deny them admission.

"Opening up the university opened up entire state," said Hunter-Gault, now CNN's South African Bureau Chief. "The walls of segregation just came tumbling down."

In the early 1950s, racial segregation in public schools was common across the United States, especially in the South. While the law said all the schools in a given district must be equal, most "black schools" were inferior to their white counterparts in terms of facilities, student-faculty ratios and more.

African-American students frequently had to walk miles to attend school, even if there was an all-white school blocks away from their home. Even after graduating from high school, they were barred from many of the top public universities. For young African-Americans in the 1950s and '60s, school integration was a long time coming.

In her 1992 autobiography, "In My Place," Hunter-Gault chronicled the treacherous but ultimately successful integration of Georgia's flagship state university. The book also gave details of her days growing up in the deep South.

With her father in the military, Hunter-Gault traveled extensively during her childhood. The small town of Covington, Georgia, was the closest she came to having a permanent home. In her youth and in her high school days in Atlanta, she became well aware of segregation and racism.

She didn't let any of that stop her. In high school, she became passionate about her schoolwork and extracurricular activities, particularly journalism.

"I worked on the school newspaper that inspired a lot of curiosity," she said. "I enjoyed talking to people and relating to people."

Hunter-Gault's interest in writing and reporting led her to the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, an hour east of Atlanta, where she was determined to get a bachelor's degree in journalism. It took a court challenge, a single dorm room and nearly a race riot, but she did it.

Her first few days in Athens were the most difficult, as students and officials used legal action, verbal threats and even vandalism (throwing a brick through her dorm window.)

"Although there were many unpleasantries from that point on, for the most part things settled down," Hunter-Gault said, "because I think it was beginning to dawn on the people who were fermenting the trouble ... And of course, we were part of a larger movement."

By the time she graduated in 1963, Hunter-Gault said she had established genuine friendships with both black and white students.

"When I graduated from UGA, I had some white friends who experienced discrimination by their own peers," she said. "I had several friendships that were truly genuine. We shared common interests, values and lifestyles."

Today she believes that African-Americans can enter any field and become successful.

"I would hope that not every person of color has to be engaged in the personal struggle over advancement because of race or color," she said. "I think today students can go anywhere they choose to go."

Remembering times when she was the only black person in a newsroos, Hunter-Gault said she is pleased to know that African-Americans interested in journalism today are having a much easier time finding a job than when she was growing up.

"It is a lot easier than it was when I was coming along," she said. "They (the media) recognized that they needed to hire more people of color. They needed to find out what was going on in the black community."

Hunter-Gault began her professional career as the first black reporter for The New Yorker. She then worked as a local news anchor for WRC-TV in Washington, D.C., and later worked 10 years at the New York Times, including two years as the paper's Harlem bureau chief.

Hunter-Gault joined the staff of National Public Radio (NPR) in 1997 after 20 years with PBS, where she was a national correspondent for "The News Hour" with Jim Lehrer. During that time she also anchored "Rights and Wrongs," an award-winning show focused on human rights. In April 1999, Hunter-Gault joined CNN as the network's top correspondent in Africa, later becoming the bureau chief in Johannesburg, South Africa.

"I am thrilled about my own professional career," she said. "I have managed to realize a dream. I have worked in every medium in the media by putting one foot in front of the other."

From South Africa, she says she hopes to make the western world more aware of events on the African continent.

"Where on the one hand the world can pass Africa by, what I am trying to do is bring Africa in the mainstream coverage of the western world," she said.