Charlayne Hunter-Gault
(b. 1942)

Although she has won many awards for her work, Charlayne Hunter-Gault most cherishes the George Foster Peabody Broadcasting Award presented to her in 1986 by the School of Journalism at the University of Georgia for Apartheid's People. This five-part documentary series explores the daily lives of a variety of South Africans. Working as a correspondent for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewHour, Hunter-Gault was honored for her writing, reporting, and personal testimonies.

Born in Due West, South Carolina, daughter of Charles and Althea Hunter, Hunter-Gault was greatly influenced by her grandmother, who read three newspapers a day. Wanting to be a journalist from the age of twelve, Hunter-Gault became the first African American woman to attend the University of Georgia in 1961. She overcame tremendous controversy, discrimination, and abuse to earn a degree in journalism in 1963. Her book In My Place (1992) is a memoir of her experiences at the University of Georgia.

Hunter-Gault is currently CNN's Johannesburg bureau chief and correspondent. She began her career at the New Yorker in 1963. She went on to spend twenty years with The MacNeil /Lehrer NewsHour. By the end of the 1990s, she was world-renowned as a correspondent for PBS, NPR, and CNN. Among the people she has interviewed are Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, General Norman Schwartzkopf, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Hunter-Gault is married, has two children, and lives in South Africa.

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