JEFFERSONVILLE — It has been 159 years since Union soldiers arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas to free the more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state.
One woman recounted her employee telling her women didn’t belong in the news business. Another woman had to field complaints from a subordinate who didn’t want to take orders from a “Black girl.” In her latest book, Medill Prof. Ava Thompson Greenwell is sharing the previously untold stories of Black women in the broadcast journalism industry.
Greenwell’s book “Ladies Leading: The Black Women Who Control Television News” exposes the implicit racism and sexism in America’s television networks through interviews with 40 women in the industry.
After working on her dissertation in 2011, Greenwell became interested in learning about women she hadn’t seen in television newsrooms and the role they might play behind the camera. She said she knew there were so few women of color in managerial positions, so she wanted to use her journalism skills to turn it into research.