As part of the recently announced 2025 Pulitzer Prizes, the late Chuck Stone, a longtime professor and journalist, was posthumously awarded a special citation. Professor Stone was honored for “for his groundbreaking work as a journalist covering the Civil Rights Movement, his pioneering role as the first Black columnist at the Philadelphia Daily News — later syndicated to nearly 100 publications — and for co-founding the National Association of Black Journalists 50 years ago.”
A native of St. Louis, Professor Stone spent most of his early years in Connecticut. During World War II, he trained as a Tuskegee Airman as a navigator. After the war, he enrolled at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. After graduating in 1948, he earned a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Chicago.
Professor Stone spent much of his career as a journalist at several Black-owned newspapers. Among several other positions, he served as the first Black host for PBS’ Black Perspective in the News, the first Black columnist and a senior editor for the Philadelphia Daily News, and editor-in-chief of the Chicago Defender.
In 1985, Professor Stone began his career in higher education at the University of Delaware. Six years later, he joined the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he taught for 14 years as the Walter Spearman Professor of Journalism. During his tenure at Chapel Hill, Professor Stone collaborated with The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education compiling a number of directories of African Americans who held endowed professorships at U.S. colleges and universities.
After retiring from Chapel Hill in 2005, the university established the Chuck Stone Program for Diversity and Education in Media in his honor. Professor Stone passed away in 2014 at the age of 89.
