CHARLES S. STONE JR. ’48

CHARLES S. STONE JR., a prominent and pioneering American journalist, university professor, former Wesleyan trustee, and a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, died Apr. 6, 2014. He was 89. During World War II he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces as a member of the Tuskegee Airmen. He received a master’s degree from the University of Chicago. During the height of the civil rights era, he worked as a reporter and editor at several influential black newspapers, including The New York Age and The Chicago Defender. From 1960 to 1963, he was editor and White House correspondent for The Washington Afro-American. In 1972 he was hired as the first black columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, where he was also a senior editor and reported extensively about police brutality and the criminal justice system. During this time, more than 75 criminal suspects asked him to escort them into police custody to avoid becoming victims of police brutality. In 1981, he was asked to help negotiate a deal between law enforcement officials and six prisoners who had taken 38 inmates and employees hostage at a Pennsylvania state prison. Four years later he began teaching journalism at the University of Delaware and then went to the University of North Carolina in 1991, where he taught for 14 years. He received six honorary doctoral degrees and numerous honors, including the University of North Carolina’s Thomas Jefferson Award, the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Free Spirit Award from the Freedom Forum, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. From 1972 to 1975 he served as a Wesleyan trustee. Beyond teaching and writing newspaper columns, he also wrote a number of books. These included Tell It Like It Is, a compilation of his columns, and Black Political Power in America, a college textbook; a novel called King Strut, which was based on a fictionalized account of the rise and fall of Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., for whom Stone worked as a special assistant; and a children’s book, Squizzy, The Black Squirrel. He and his wife, Louise Davis Stone, divorced after decades of marriage, and she predeceased him. Survivors include three children, one grandchild, and two sisters. He was the cousin of Alan K. Dockerey ’08.