Pioneering Newswoman Carole Simpson on Perseverance and Making Trouble | https://today.emerson.edu/
Pioneering Newswoman Carole Simpson on Perseverance and Making Trouble | https://today.emerson.edu/
Pioneering Newswoman Carole Simpson on Perseverance and Making Trouble
Carole Simpson credits Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with igniting her career.
The three-time Emmy Award-winning reporter and anchor at ABC News and NBC News was a cub reporter for WCFL-FM, a CBS-affiliated news radio station in Chicago in January 1966 when her newsroom got word that King would be flying into O’Hare later that afternoon.
Nobody knew why the Civil Rights leader was heading north to Chicago, so her bosses sent her to track King down once he landed and ask him. After outsmarting the rest of the Chicago news corps and finding King at his hotel near the airport, she was told by his lieutenants that she’d have to wait until the press conference the next day to hear from the man like everyone else.
Simpson didn’t sneak onto the elevators and up to King’s floor just to leave without a scoop, so she spread out her winter coat on the cold tile floor and camped out near the elevators — all night long.
The next morning, she heard voices at the end of the hall and saw Dr. King walking toward her. He spotted her, stopped, and asked if she was the young lady he was told about – the one who waited all night to talk to him.
Simpson explained that she was there to find out what he was doing in Chicago. He told her there would be a press conference in a few hours, and she told him she wanted to beat her competitors. Then he leaned over and whispered in her ear that he was there to challenge the city’s segregated housing patterns and Mayor Daley’s refusal to do anything about it.
As he got on the elevator, Simpson said, he turned back and told her, “Young lady, I expect big things out of you one day. I appreciate your persistence and your perseverance. You’re going to do well.”
“Well, can you imagine how I felt?” Simpson asked students, faculty, and staff gathered on Zoom to hear from the groundbreaking journalist. “This is Dr. King telling me that I’m going to do well, and it was like throughout my career, I couldn’t let him down.”
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