Juan Williams

journalist; writer

Personal Information

Born Juan Williams on April 10, 1954, in Colon, Panama; son of Rogelio L., an accountant, and Alma Geraldine (Elias), a secretary; married Susan Delise July 1, 1978; children: Antonio Mason, Regan Almina
Memberships: Haverford College Board of Trustees; Aspen Institute of Communications and Society program; Washington Journalism Center; New York Civil Rights Coalition.

Career

The Washington Post, columnist and reporter, 1976-99;, Fox News, anchor, 1997-, Fox News Sunday, panelist, 1997-; National Public Radio, radio show host, 2000-01; America's Black Forum, host, 1996-.

Life's Work

Juan Williams' name and face are easily recognized in political journalism, radio, and television. An award-winning journalist, he has been a national and White House correspondent for the Washington Post, with his work appearing in that publication for 23 years. His articles have also been published in several national magazines, including Newsweek, Fortune, Ebony, Atlantic Monthly, and The New Republic. His personal interest is civil rights and race relations, and he has authored two books: the best-selling Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 and Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary. Williams has also written television documentaries, on of which earned him an Emmy Award. A sought-after speaker, he has addressed groups throughout the nation, at colleges, corporations, trade associations, citizen associations, and civil right groups, often speaking on diversity and race issues. He has appeared regularly on Fox News Sunday as a panelist, has been a rotating host of American's Black Forum, and has had regular appearances on Nightline, Washington Week in Review, Crossfire, The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, and Capitol Gang Sunday. He also hosted Talk of the Nation, a National Public Radio call-in talk show.

Juan Williams was born to Rogelio L. and Alma Geraldine Williams on April 10, 1954 in Colon, Panama. His father was an accountant, and his mother worked as a secretary. He won a scholarship to Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie, New York, a Quaker school. Looking back on his experience at Oakwood Friends School thirty years later, as he spoke at Haverford College about education during the national convention of the Friends Council on Education, he told the audience of how attending the private school had made a difference in his life. He went on to Haverford College after graduating from Oakwood. Williams credited his experiences at Oakwood with allowing him to exceed the vision he had held for himself. His speech to the Friends Council on Education discussed diversity in the Quaker schools, commenting on the fact the he was one of few blacks attending at the time. Williams majored in philosophy at Haverford College in Philadelphia and graduated in 1976 with a bachelor's degree.

Williams began his career in journalism by interning at the Washington Post in 1976. He was then hired full-time, and as a journalist for the Washington Post he was an editorial writer, national correspondent, columnist, and White House reporter. He spent 23 years there.

It was while covering White House affairs during the Reagan administration that Williams became interested in civil rights. Among other issues, President Reagan, who originally opposed the idea, presided over the declaration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. When Williams spoke to students at the Reynolds School of Journalism in 2001 he was quoted in the Zephyr as saying "There was a lot of tension between black and white reporters. There was a lot of the tension in society in the newsroom." He said that journalism had allowed him to move into white-dominated areas, and that when he served as a White House reporter earlier in his career he was "a novelty" at the time. "Here was a black man talking about events at the White House." He added that racial issues are still present within the media today.

In 1987 Williams' book, Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 was published by Viking. Each chapter was devoted to specific civil rights events during those years, such as the school desegregation case in Topeka, Kansas of Brown v. Board of Education. This was the case that brought first black Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall fame. At the time, Marshall was an attorney for the NAACP. Other events covered in the book include the march on Washington in 1963, the desegregation of Little Rock, Arkansas schools in 1957, and the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. The book was a companion volume to the six-part public television series of the same name, and traced events of the civil rights movement from its start, including various facets of the movement, many of the people involved, as well as the changes that resulted. Williams also incorporated numerous interviews he had conducted with the people who had been involved in the movements, including many lesser-known, but equally important, people who struggled for equal rights. The book was praised for its truthful reality, and became a bestseller.

Williams hosted Talk of the Nation, a national call-in radio program, for 18 months in 2000-2001. As part of the program, he visited towns around America and held town hall meetings; the meetings became part of the National Public Radio series called The Changing Face of America. Its purpose was to discuss the changing society and culture of the United States at the millennium. Williams told journalism students at the Reynolds School of Journalism at University of Nevada Reno, "The goal from the start has been to look at America at the turn of the century. What it was really like--key cultural, political, economic and social trends."

When Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas was defending sexual harassment charges in 1995, Williams was supportive of him in his writings and on television. He also defended Thomas when Williams appeared on Crossfire as a co-host to Pat Buchanan. But Williams found himself the subject of news stories and facing verbal sexual harassment charges from female Post employees. The charges resulted in disciplinary actions and an apology from Williams.

Williams took time off from his duties with the Washington Post to write Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary. Published by Times Books in 1998, reviews of the work were mixed, but generally good. Williams studied the more personal side of Thurgood Marshall and was granted many interviews by him over a six-month period during 1989. Marshall served as a Supreme Court Justice from 1967 to 1991; he died two years after stepping down. Marshall had led a life steeped in the civil rights movement: he fought racial discrimination many times as lead attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during 1938-1961. His best-known case was the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in which he was victorious in helping de-segregate schools. He went on to serve as federal appeals court judge and Solicitor General before being appointed to the Supreme Court by President Johnson. It is during his years on the court that Williams' biography is said to be the weakest, owing to Williams' own weakness in jurisprudence.

In America, reviewer Daniel Levine said, "After Marshall became a judge, Williams seems to have less interest in him. The cases, even important ones, are dealt with hastily, and, unfortunately, very few of Marshall's vigorous dissents are described. Williams is more original in filling in some bureaucratic dimensions of Marshall's life." In National Review, John O. McGinnis wrote, "Juan Williams's book is most successful in recreating the vanished world of Marshall's upbringing. Williams draws a picture of a community that maintained the quiet dignity of self reliance even in the face of economic hardship and social prejudice." Williams was quoted as having told Brian Lamb in the Duquesne University publication, The Times, "This was at the end of his career, the end of his life, and it was a rich time and one in which he was willing to talk. It has been a great gift to me." And although the book was criticized as being thin on Marshall's Supreme Court years, that lack has been credited to Williams' difficulty in obtaining certain records. Williams' support of Clarence Thomas, who succeeded Marshall, resulted in the NAACP Legal Defense Fund barring him from the research materials he needed to fill out the biography.

Williams has written several documentaries, including his critically acclaimed Politics--The New Black Power, and A. Philip Randolph--For Jobs and Freedom. His From Riot to Recovery won an Emmy Award in 1989.

Awards

Selected: Front Page Award, Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, 1979; Education Writers of America, 1979; Columnist of the Year, Washingtonian, 1982; Emmy Award, 1989; Outstanding memorial Book Award, Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States; Best National Book Award, Time magazines; honorary doctorates, Haverford College and State University of New York.

Works

Selected writings

• Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, Viking, 1987.
• Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, Times Books, 1998.

Further Reading

Books

• Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize, 1954-1965, Viking, New York, 1987.

• America, April 10, 1999, p. 32.
• The Duquesne University Times, March 20, 2000.
• National Review, December 7, 1998, p. 62.
• New York Amsterdam News, August 30, 2001, p. 35.
• Newsweek, October 28, 1991, p. 33.
• Time, October 28, 1991, p. 30.

• America's Black Forum, http://www. Americasblackforum.cm/meetthehosts.asp
• The Brown Daily Herald, www.theherald.org/issues/021999/writer.f.html
• Council For American Private Education (CAPE), http://www.capenet.org/Out5- 99.html
• Columbia Journalism Review, http://www.cjr.org/year/91/6/d_l.asp
• National Public Radio (NPR), http://www.npr.org/about/people/bios/jwilliams.html
• Tucson Weekly, http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tw/12-17-95/curr3.htm
• University of New Hampshire, http://www.unh.edu.mlk-day.html
• Zephyr, http://zephyr.unr.edu/arts/archives/art_howell_williams.html
• Library of Congress, http://lcweb.loc.gov/today/pr/1999/99-184.html

— Sandy J. Stiefer

For the Chilean naval officer, see Juan Williams Rebolledo.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009)

Juan Williams
Juan Williams speaking at Chautauqua Institution in 2007
Born	April 10, 1954 (1954-04-10) (age 55) Colón, Panama
Occupation	Author, journalist
Notable credit(s)	CNN Crossfire Fox News Sunday National Public Radio

Juan Williams (born April 10, 1954) is a an American journalist, author, and political commentator.

Williams regularly appears on major radio and television programs, notably National Public Radio and the Fox News Channel. He also writes for leading newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and has been published in magazines including The Atlantic Monthly and Time.

Williams has spoken at such major events as the Smithsonian’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown decision which ended legal segregation in public schools and was selected by the United States Census Bureau as moderator of its first program beginning its 2010 effort. He has received honorary doctorates from Lafayette College, Wittenberg University, and Long Island University, among other institutions.^[1][2][3]

Williams was an editorial writer, op-ed columnist, White House correspondent and national correspondent during his 23 year career at The Washington Post. He has won several awards for investigative journalism and his opinion columns.

Contents 1 Early years 2 Career 3 Television 4 Books 5 References 6 External links

Early years

Williams was born in Colon, Panama, near the Canal Zone, then a United States territory. His father, Roger, was a boxing trainer and his mother, Alma, a seamstress. He was raised in the Episcopal Church. When he was four years old his family —including older siblings Elena and Rogelio — moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. He then won a scholarship to attend Oakwood School in Poughkeepsie, New York. He became president of the student body, editor of the student paper and was captain of the baseball, cross-country and championship basketball team. He then won a scholarship to Haverford College where he graduated with a B.A. in philosophy in 1976.

Career

During college, Williams worked for three years as a reporter intern for the Philadelphia Bulletin. He also won a Dow-Jones Newspaper Fund Award for outstanding young journalists and worked for a summer as an editor at the Providence Journal before returning to finish college. After graduation, he won an internship at The Washington Post. He worked at the paper from 1976 to 2000. During his tenure at the Post, he held several positions, including metropolitan staff writer. While on the local staff he wrote a prize winning 6 part series on the problems in the DC public schools that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His investigative reporting on corruption in Mayor Marion Barry’s administration also won several awards. He later served on the Post’s national staff – covering every major political campaign from 1980 to 2000 – and as a political analyst. He also wrote as the paper’s White House correspondent, as an editorial writer, op-ed columnist and for the Post Sunday Magazine.

While at the Post he became a regular panelist on Inside Washington, a leading weekly Washington political affairs program. In 1990 CNN signed him to be a host for its highly rated Crossfire program with co-hosts Bob Novak, Michael Kinsley and Pat Buchanan. He also regularly appeared on Capitol Gang and hosted Crossfire Sunday with Lynne Cheney.

In 1996, Williams became host of the syndicated television program, America’s Black Forum. The show’s regular panelists included Julian Bond, Niger Innis, Deborah Mathis and Armstrong Williams.

Williams joined the Fox News Channel as a political contributor in 1997. He is a regular panelist on Special Report with Bret Baier and Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. He also regularly appears on The O'Reilly Factor and has served as a guest host on the top rated cable news show.^[4]

Williams joined NPR in 1999 as host of the daily afternoon talk show Talk of the Nation. During his nearly two years as host the show gained its highest ratings. He then served as senior national correspondent for NPR, interviewing newsmakers as well as providing analysis of major events in interviews with the anchors for the newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition Saturday and Sunday.

Television

Williams has received an Emmy Award for television documentary writing, and has won widespread critical acclaim for a series of documentaries, including Politics – The New Black Power, A. Phillip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom, Marion Anderson, Dateline Freedom- Civil Rights and The Press, Riot to Recovery and Dying for Healthcare.

He was the scriptwriter for Oprah Winfrey’s Prime Time special – No One Dies Alone.

Williams is credited along with the production staff at Blackside, Inc. for the book, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, written after the fact as a companion volume to the landmark PBS series by the same title. (The television programs were written by and credited to Blackside's team of producers and series writer Steve Fayer.) Similarly, the book, This Far by Faith was created by Williams and Quinton Dixie to accompany a PBS series of the same name that was already in production at Blackside.

He has also won an Emmy Award for TV documentary writing and won widespread critical acclaim for a series of documentaries including Politics-The New Black Power. His documentary on A. Phillip Randolph was featured on PBS. Articles by Williams have appeared in magazines ranging from Newsweek, Fortune and The Atlantic Monthly to Ebony, GQ and The New Republic.

Books

Williams’ book Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America – and What We Can Do About It (August 2006) presents a critical look at the current generation of black leaders. In it, he echoes themes expressed by Bill Cosby, calling on black Americans to take responsibility for their actions; return to a work ethic that, he contends, has been lost in recent years; and begin to reemphasize stigmatization, at least in certain forms, as a way to promote policies that he sees as conducive to black development, such as renewed focus on education, monogamy and marriage and self-sufficiency. While Williams acknowledges that the African-American community has made great strides since the civil rights era, he also argues that there have been significant areas, such as out-of-wedlock birth rate, in which black Americans and families have fallen behind.

He is the author of the critically acclaimed, best-selling biography of the nation’s first African-American Supreme Court Justice – Thurgood Marshall – American Revolutionary. It was selected by the New York Times as a “Notable Book of the Year,” and has been reprinted several times, including on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Other books include the 2006 New York Times Best Seller, Enough – The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America-What We Can Do About It and I’ll Find A Way or Make One – Tribute to Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He is also the author of My Soul Looks Back in Wonder – Voices of The Civil Rights Experience. Williams also wrote the introductory essay for the celebrated book Black Farmers in America featuring photographs by John Ficara.

Williams is also credited as author on two books written to support documentary series already in production at Blackside, Inc. in Boston. (The books are based on the television series, not vice versa.) Late in the production of Blackside, Inc.'s landmark PBS documentary series, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, Williams worked with the Blackside publishing team and staff producers to create the series' companion volume, also called Eyes on the Prize. Along the same lines, he and Quinton Dixie wrote the companion book for This Far by Faith – Stories from the African American Religious Experience.

References

1. ^ "Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons to Speak on May 11 at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus Commencement". Long Island University. http://www.brooklyn.liu.edu/wn/2006/44.html. Retrieved 08 December 2009. 
2. ^ "Juan Williams Speaks at 173rd Commencement" (in Lafayette College). http://www.lafayette.edu/news.php/view/12236. Retrieved 08 December 2009. 
3. ^ "Wittenberg Senior Class Selects Juan Williams As 2007 Commencement Speaker". Wittenberg University. March 13, 2007. http://www4.wittenberg.edu/news/2007/03_13.html. Retrieved 08 December 2009. 
4. ^ http://www.foxnews.com/bios/talent/juan-williams Williams' Fox News biography

External links

• Juan Williams: NPR Biography
• Juan Williams: Fox News Biography
• A Conversation with Juan Williams — Video

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