LCCR Honors Journalist Soledad O'Brien for Hurricane Katrina Coverage
Feature Story by Tyler Lewis - 4/21/2008
On May 14, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) will honor award-winning journalist Soledad O'Brien at its annual Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award Dinner in Washington, D.C.
O'Brien is an anchor and special correspondent for CNN's "Special Investigations Unit," an investigative documentary series.
Wade Henderson, president and CEO of LCCR, said that O'Brien is being honored by LCCR for her "pivotal role in telling the stories of Katrina's homeless."
O'Brien's work on CNN's coverage of the thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina helped win the network a George Foster Peabody Award for broadcasting excellence. In addition, she created a documentary titled "Children of the Storm," which provides video cameras to young Hurricane Katrina survivors so that they can tell their own stories of life after the hurricane.
"We just decided to hand out cameras to young people. I, literally one night, woke up in the middle of the night and said to my husband, 'Oh my God, I've got it. We can hand out cameras, '" she told the Times-Picayune in August 2007.
She also covered the London terrorist attacks in July 2005 and the aftermath of the tsunami in Thailand, which won CNN the Alfred I. duPont Award for broadcast journalism.
Recently, O'Brien reported for "CNN Presents: Black in America," which chronicled the current state of Black America 40 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
O'Brien has won a number of awards and honors.
She recently received the first annual Soledad O'Brien Freedom's Voice Award, which honors mid-career professionals who serve as catalysts for social change within their fields. It was created in her honor by Community Voices at the Morehouse School of Medicine. Also this year, she received the NAACP's President's Award in recognition of her humanitarian efforts and journalistic excellence.
In 2007, O'Brien won the Gracie Allen Award for her reporting on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict and her reports on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and was the recipient of the American Red Cross of Massachusetts Bay's Clara Barton Humanitarian Award.
LCCR's Civil Rights Award was named for former United States vice president, senator, and civil rights pioneer Hubert H. Humphrey, whose years of public service, leadership, and dedication to equal opportunity changed the face of America.
Awardees are selected based on their distinguished contributions to the advancement of civil and human rights. Previous recipients include Senator Edward Kennedy; former President William J. Clinton; Representative John Lewis; civil rights leader Julian Bond; disability rights advocate Justin Dart; the filmmakers behind the Academy Award-winning movie, Crash; and actor-activist Danny Glover, among others.
