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Leonard Pitts Jr

You know how kids go through phases? You know how the average little boy or girl wants to be a doctor this week, a video game designer next week? Leonard Pitts, Jr. never did that.

He says that from the tender age of five years old – little more than a “fetus with pretensions,” as he puts it – he knew what wanted to do. Indeed, he knew what he was put here to do. We are talking about a very long time ago: when Leonard Pitts was five, John F. Kennedy was still in the White House, “Whites Only” signs were still on the walls, and the Beatles had not yet invaded America.

The world has changed a great deal since then. But one thing never did.

In a career that now spans 43 years, Leonard Pitts, Jr. has worked as a columnist, a college professor, a radio producer and a lecturer. But those are just the job titles. If you ask him what he does – what he is – he’ll tell you now what he would have told you then.

He is a writer.

Millions of people are glad he is. They read him every week in one of the most popular newspaper columns in the country. Many more have come to know him through a series of critically-acclaimed books, including his latest, a novel of race, faith and World War II called The Last Thing You Surrender.

Pitts’ stubborn devotion to the art and craft of words has yielded many awards, chief among them the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

But that was only the capstone of a career filled with prizes for literary excellence. In 1997, Pitts took first place for commentary in division four (newspapers with a circulation of over 300,000) in the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors’ Ninth Annual Writing Awards competition. He is a two-time recipient of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Award of Excellence, and was chosen NABJ’s 2008 Journalist of the Year. He is a five-time recipient of the Atlantic City Press Club’s National Headliners Award and a six-time recipient of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Green Eyeshade Award. In 2001, he received the American Society of Newspaper Editors prestigious Award For Commentary Writing and was named Feature of the Year in the column writing division by Editor and Publisher magazine. In 2002, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists awarded Pitts its inaugural Columnist of the Year award; in 2016, it named him to its Hall of Fame. In 2002 and in 2009, GLAAD Media awarded Pitts the Outstanding Newspaper Columnist award. In 2017, he was awarded the prestigious Missouri Honor Medal for “distinguished service to journalism.” He has received four honorary doctorates.

Pitts’ work has made him an in-demand lecturer. He maintains a rigorous speaking schedule that has taken him to colleges, civic groups and professional associations all over the country. He has also taught at a number of institutions of higher learning, including Hampton University, Ohio University, the University of Maryland, and Virginia Commonwealth University. In the fall of 2011, he was a visiting professor at Princeton, teaching a course in writing about race.

Twice each week, millions of newspaper readers around the country seek out his rich and uncommonly resonant voice. In a word, he connects with them. Nowhere was this demonstrated more forcefully than in the response to his initial column on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Pitts’ column, “We’ll Go Forward From This Moment,” an angry and defiant open letter to the terrorists, circulated the globe via the Internet. It generated upwards of 30,000 emails, and has since been set to music, reprinted in poster form, read on television by Regis Philbin and quoted by Congressman Richard Gephardt as part of the Democratic Party’s weekly radio address.

Tavis Smiley called Leonard Pitts “the most insightful and inspiring columnist of his generation.”

And when Pitts won his Pulitzer, Bob Costas wondered, “What took them so long?”

Leonard Pitts was born and raised in Southern California. He was awarded a degree in English from the University of Southern California at the age of 19, having entered school at 15 on a special honors program. Since 1995, he and his wife have lived in Bowie, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D. C.

Categories: Author and Writer, Black History Month, Featured, New to AEISpeakers, Social Justice

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Videos

Topics

  • Martin Luther King Does Not Belong To You

    It has been over 50 years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and not much has changed. The things we have been fighting for still resonate now. There are those who have used Dr. King as an all-purpose hero and Pitts will put a reclaim on who he really was and what Dr. King has stood for. He will give you the inspiration for a new vision.

  • Becoming Dad: Black Men and Journey to Fatherhood

  • Race in America

  • Social Justice

Books

The Last Thing You Surrender: A Novel of World War II
The Last Thing You Surrender: A Novel of World War II

Pulitzer-winning journalist and bestselling novelist (Freeman) Leonard Pitts, Jr.’s new historical page-turner is a great American tale of race and war, following three characters from the Jim Crow South as they face the enormous changes World War II triggers in the United States.

You can purchase this book here

Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood
Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood

The fatherless black family is a problem that grows to bigger proportions every year as generations of black children grow up without an adult male in their homes. As this dire pattern grows worse, what can men do who hope to break it, when there are so few models and so little guidance in their own homes and communities? Where can they learn to “become Dad?” When Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Pitts—who himself grew up with an abusive father whose absences came as a relief—interviewed dozens of men across the country, he found both discouragement and hope, as well as deep insights into his own roles as son and father. An unflinching investigation, both personal and journalistic, of black fatherhood in America, this is the best, most pivotal book on this profoundly important issue.

You can purchase this book here

Forward From this Moment: Selected Columns, 1994-2009
Forward From this Moment: Selected Columns, 1994-2009

Since 1976, when he was an 18-year-old junior at USC, Leonard Pitts' writing has been winning awards, including the Pulitzer and five National Headliner Awards. This book collects his best newspaper columns, along with select longer pieces. The book is arranged chronologically under three broad subject headings: “Waiting for Someday to Come,” about children and family; “White Men Can’t Jump (and Other Stupid Myths),” about race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and other fault lines of American culture; and “Forward from this Moment,” about life after the September 11 attacks, spirituality, American identity, and Britney Spears.

You can purchase this book here

Freeman: A Novel
Freeman: A Novel

A former slave embarks on a hellish journey through the post-Civil War South to reunite with his wife, in this novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author.

You can purchase this book here

Grant Park: A Novel
Grant Park: A Novel

Two Chicago newspapermen grapple with race and the past in this contemporary terrorist thriller by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Freeman.

Disillusioned Chicago columnist Malcolm Toussaint, fueled by yet another report of unarmed Black men killed by police, hacks into his newspaper’s server to post an incendiary column that had been rejected by his editors. Toussaint then disappears, and his longtime editor, Bob Carson, is summarily fired within hours of the column’s publication.

You can purchase this book here

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