By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 20, 2019 — I really, really had to share this Facebook reminder: “Leon and Oswald are celebrating 9 years of friendship on Facebook!”
Leon Dash is one of the Black journalists known as “The Metro Seven” who filed a landmark complaint against the Washington Post with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1972 charging the newspaper with discrimination against its Black employees.
“The case, believed to be the first of its kind against a major American newspaper, unarguably accelerated the hiring and promotion of scores of journalists of color. More importantly, it helped solidify the role of Black journalists in the interpretation of contemporary American history,” according to the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ)
Because I previously lived in Washington, D.C., for 21 years before returning to The Bahamas permanently in 1996, I knew Leon Dash was an award-winning reporter at the Washington Post, but I met him for the first time in 2006 during one of his periodic visits to Nassau as a consultant with the Nassau Guardian and I attended a board meeting as Editor of the Freeport News, which is owned by The Guardian.
Here’s an excerpt from a COMMENTARY I wrote earlier this year to give you an idea of how much I cherish and treasure the friendship I have developed with fellow journalist Leon Dash:
“WASHINGTON, D.C., August 12, 2019 – Shortly after Sir Charles Carter became Publisher of the Nassau Guardian in 2006, he contacted an old-time friend he had attended high school with in New York who had established a very successful career as a journalist in the United States.
Sir Charles had also become a renowned journalist, but radio and television were the foundation for his journalistic accomplishments, and he realized that the challenges that lie ahead as publisher of one of The Bahamas’ leading daily newspapers required the advice and support of someone who had experience in the print aspect of the Fourth Estate. Therefore, he placed a phone call to his old high school buddy, Leon Dash, and convinced the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who had become a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to visit Nassau to discuss the possibility of becoming an editorial consultant for The Guardian.
Given his pioneering background in helping to “tear down” racial barriers in journalism at the Washington Post, Professor Dash almost immediately devised and established a journalistic training program at The Guardian after he became a consultant. He took his training program one step further by arranging for several young reporters at The Guardian who had undergraduate degrees in journalism to obtain scholarships at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study for their Master’s Degree in journalism…”
I would like to take this opportunity to wish my friend Professor Dash and his family a blessed Christmas and a prosperous and Happy New Year. Click on the following link to see the reminder posted on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dashleon1/videos/961307230936932/
