New Date for Visionary Leadership Award honoring Charlayne Hunter-Gault

October 26, 2012

Award presentation and benefit luncheon honoring journalist & civil rights activist Charlayne Hunter-Gault will now occur on February 5, 2013

What: Visionary Leadership Award honoring Charlayne Hunter-Gault
When: Tuesday, February 5, 2013, 12:00pm
Where: Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale, New Haven, CT

NEW HAVEN, CT—A new date has been announced for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas’ 3rd Annual Visionary Leadership Award, honoring journalist and civil-rights activist Charlayne Hunter Gault. The award presentation and luncheon will now occur on Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 12pm. The new date has been necessitated by unforeseen changes in Ms. Hunter-Gault’s schedule. Said the Festival’s Executive Director, Mary Lou Aleskie: “We wanted to be sure that we are able to properly recognize Ms. Hunter-Gault’s extraordinary life and achievements. This new date will also allow more of the community to fully enjoy and celebrate her remarkable story.”

The Visionary Leadership Award honors a leader whose trailblazing work is impacting the world. Occurring outside of the annual Festival, the award connects the Festival’s Ideas programs to every day impacts on the community and the world.

While in New Haven, Ms. Hunter-Gault will also visit with other organizations in the community, including Gateway Community College and Yale University. In conjunction her honor from the Festival, Ms. Hunter-Gault will be awarded the prestigious Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale University. She will speak and meet with students at Yale as part of her schedule in New Haven.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an award-winning journalist whose life and work has brought light to a number of important issues in civil rights, social justice, public health, and education. Her personal life story has been inspiring impactful as well: in 1961, she experienced the civil rights movement first hand as one of the first black students to be admitted to the University of Georgia, in 1961. Her attorney during the case was Constance Baker Motley, a New Haven native who would later become the first black female to serve as a federal judge.

On honoring Ms. Hunter-Gault, Aleskie said “We are thrilled and excited to be honoring Charlayne Hunter-Gault with the Visionary Leadership Award. Her lifelong, personal fearlessness against injustice has brought about genuine change in the world, and her sound sense of inquiry as a journalist has informed all of our lives. She embodies everything that this award was created to honor, and more.”

The Festival especially pleased to honor Ms. Hunter-Gault in New Haven, given Ms. Hunter-Gault’s connection to Constance Baker Motley. Motley’s legacy was celebrated at the Festival in 2012 with walking tours and exhibits.

ABOUT THE VISIONARY LEADERSHIP AWARD

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas’ Visionary Leadership Award was created in honor of the late Jean M. Handley’s leadership as a Founding Director of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. Ms. Handley provided thoughtful and effective leadership as a lifelong champion of many of the region’s arts, cultural, social, and educational organizations. She was also a role model for women: a person of extraordinary wisdom and an individual of exceedingly high standards who was generous with her talent and time. Prior awardees include Jill Abramson, journalist and first female Executive Editor of the New York Times, and Zainab Salbi, the pioneering Founder and CEO of Women For Women International.

Each year, the Visionary Leadership Award is bestowed on a leader whose work is impacting the world. All proceeds from the award presentation and luncheon will benefit The Jean M. Handley Fund for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, primarily funding areas of the Festival that provide accessibility, civic engagement, and that connect arts and ideas, which were Jean’s values and passion. Ms. Handley’s fellow Founding Directors Anne Tyler Calabresi and Roslyn Milstein Meyer are the Honorary Chairs for the Visionary Leadership Award.

ABOUT CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an award-winning journalist with more than 40 years in the industry, extending her work at various times to all media. She is the author of three books: the latest is To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement, a historical narrative for young readers grade nine and up, published in 2012 by The New York Times and Roaring Brook Press. Her other two books are New News Out of Africa: Uncovering the African Renaissance (Oxford University Press) and In My Place, a memoir of the Civil Rights Movement, fashioned around her experiences as the first black woman to attend the University of Georgia (Farrar Strauss and Giroux, and in paperback by Vintage Press).

In 2005, she returned to NPR as a Special Correspondent, after six years as CNN's Johannesburg bureau chief and correspondent. She joined CNN in April 1999 from National Public Radio, where she worked as the network's chief correspondent in Africa and was awarded a Peabody in 1998 for her coverage of the continent. Hunter-Gault joined NPR in 1997 after 20 years with PBS, where she worked as a national correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. She began her journalism career as a reporter for The New Yorker; then worked as a local news anchor for WRC-TV in Washington, D.C.; and as the Harlem bureau chief for The New York Times. She is currently Africa Bureau Chief for Essence magazine and on the board of and a frequent contributor to The Root.

Her numerous honors include two Emmy awards and two Peabody awards—the first for her work on "Apartheid's People," a NewsHour series about South African life during apartheid. Over the years, she has been the recipient of numerous other awards and citations from the National Association of Black Journalists, including for her CNN series on Zimbabwe; the Sidney Hillman Foundation, the American Women in Radio and Television, the Good Housekeeping Broadcast Personality of the Year and Amnesty International for her human rights reporting, especially her PBS Series, Rights and Wrongs, a Human Rights Television magazine. In August 2005, she was inducted in the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. In 2011, she received the Fred Shuttlesworth Humanitarian Award.

Hunter-Gault is a sought after public speaker, holds some three dozen honorary degrees and is on the board of The Carter Center, the Peabody Awards, The Committee to Protect Journalists, and the African Media Initiative, a project aimed at promoting the highest ethical standards and business practices, as well as quality journalism on the African continent. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 2010, she received the D. C. Choral Arts Society Humanitarian Award and in 2011, she was honored with both the Fred Shuttlesworth Humanitarian Award and the W. Haywood Burns award from New York’s Neighborhood Defender Service. Hunter-Gault is married to businessman Ronald T. Gault and has two adult children, Susan, an artist, and Chuma, an actor. Hunter-Gault divides her time between two homes: one in Johannesburg, South Africa, the other in Martha’s Vineyard.

ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ARTS & IDEAS

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas was established in 1996 by Anne Calabresi, Jean Handley and Roslyn Meyer. It is now a 15-day festival of performing arts, lectures, and conversations that celebrates the greatest artists and thinkers from around the world. Each June, the Festival takes over the theaters, open spaces, and courtyards of New Haven, Connecticut with performances and dialogues that tickle the senses, engage the mind, and inspire the soul.

More than 80% of Festival programs are completely free to the public, including events that feature some of the most prestigious jazz, classical, dance, and theater artists in the world. The Festival’s programs have an impact throughout the year, including engagement and educational programming such as the Festival Fellowship Program for underserved youth, and the Visionary Leadership Award held in autumn of each year.

The Festival is presented each year with generous support from the State of Connecticut, Yale University, the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, First Niagara Bank, the National Endowment for the Arts, and many other individuals and foundations throughout the region and country.

Festival 2013 will be held from June 15 to 29, 2013. Programming details will be announced in March. For more information, go to ArtIdea.org.