Items

• Interview: Cross, June, 2015

  June Cross is a writer and documentary producer who covers the intersection of poverty, race, and politics in the United States. She has been a Professor of Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York since 2006. There, she founded and directed the program in Journalistic Documentary at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. At the time of this interview, Cross had just finished her Emmy-nominated documentary Wihemina’s War which follows a Southern grandmother who struggles to help her granddaughter survive the health risks and social stigma of living with HIV in South Carolina. She has been a fellow at Columbia’s Institute for Research in Afro-American Studies, at Carnegie-Mellon University’s School of Urban and Public Affairs, and the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Studies at Harvard. In this interview, Cross speaks about her childhood growing up in Atlantic City in the 1950s. She then speaks about her painful College experience and the impact the women in her life had on Cross’s goals and sense of self. The interview closes with Cross speaking about her experience in journalism, her experience as a professor, and advice for women who plan to have careers in media.
• Interview: Walker, Steven, 2016

  In his interview, Steven Walker describes his upbringing in the town of Montclair, New Jersey during the mid-1960s, his experiences as a first-generation college student studying journalism at Livingston College at Rutgers-New Brunswick during the early 1980s, and his career as a journalist in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. With family roots going back to Jamaica, Walkers' grandparents came from Mississippi and North Carolina. During World War II, his father, a Montclair native, served in the Red Ball Express in France after the Allies invaded Europe in 1944. During his early school years, he experienced diversity in Montclair that had not existed when his parents were growing up there. This continued into his years at Livingston College, where he became a founding member of the Rutgers chapter of Kappa Delta Rho, an organization with members coming from a wide variety of backgrounds. He was also a regular contributor to the Daily Targum and the Black Voice, both student-run newspapers operating at Rutgers. After graduating from Livingston College in the Class of 1986, he started his professional journalism career writing for the Herald and News in Passaic, New Jersey. He went on to work for such publications as The Star-Ledger, The Source, The Orange Transcript, The West Orange Chronicle and The East Orange Record. After working as a field investigator for the N.J. Department of the Public Advocate, he became an investigator for the N.J. Division on Civil Rights. Walker lives in Montclair, New Jersey with his wife and son.