Black History 2012

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‘Red Tails’ tells the story of first black fighter squadron

BY F.M. WIGGINS STAFF WRITER

PETERSBURG — A new movie in theaters, “Red Tails,” highlights the World War II exploits of a group of African-American fighter pilots who broke racial barriers while amassing an impressive combat record.

One of those pilots — part of the Howard Baugh Sr., one of the famed Tuskegee Airmen — hailed Army Air Corps’ famed Tuskegee from Petersburg.

Airmen who fought during World Howard Baugh Sr., who died in War II, is shown as a young sec2008, flew 135 combat air missions ond lieutenant, left, and as a and logged 250 combat flight hours major, right, in the Army Air Corps. with the Tuskegee Airmen over He retired from the military as a the skies of World War II Europe. lieutenant colonel.

In total, he amassed 6,000 pilot hours in 15 different types of air“What they accomplished craft as a Tuskegee Airman. He should be a source of pride for us retired from the military as a lieu- all,” he said. tenant colonel.

Ironically, the younger Baugh His son, Howard Baugh Jr., said didn’t fully know about his dad’s his father would be proud to see role, not only as a fighter pilot but the theatrical movie “Red Tails,” a civil rights pioneer, until he was which opened Jan. 20. older.

“When my brother told me that “Dad, was just dad,” said the another one was coming out and younger Baugh. “He didn’t really George Lucas was involved, I was talk about it a whole lot, so I didn’t very excited,” the younger Baugh know he was a hero — other than said. that he was my hero — until I was He also noted that while his in flight school.” father would be proud to see the The younger Baugh said that he major theatrical release of the film — coincidentally on what would have been his 92nd birthday — he would likely have some criticism as well.

“After the 1995 HBO movie, he said that they had put more drama in it than was really there,” the younger Baugh said. “He also said that they got some things wrong, like the fact that all but one of the instructors was white and that everybody really wanted to see them succeed.”

Howard Baugh Jr. doesn’t doubt that the latest — Howard Baugh Jr., son of Tuskegee Airman Howard Baugh Sr. film will have dramatic license, but considers it an important story for people to know. He feels that the movie is an important movie, not just to AfricanAmerican history, but all of Amer- was in flight school talking about ican history. how he was inspired to fly by his

“Dad was just dad. He didn’t really talk about it a whole lot, so I didn’t know he was a hero — other than that he was my hero — until I was in flight school.”

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CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS/BAUGH FAMILY COLLECTION

In this photo from the Baugh family album, retired U.S Army Corps Lt. Col. Howard Baugh Sr. sits in the cockpit of a P-40 Warhawk. father, who was a fighter pilot during World War II. That’s when the instructor asked him if his father was a Tuskegee Airman.

“That was the first time I heard the term,” he said.

The elder Baugh was born and raised in Petersburg and attended Virginia State College — now Virginia State University. After graduating from college in 1941, he decided he wanted to get involved in the war effort. He didn’t want to be in the infantry, so he signed up for the Army Air Corps, the precursor to the modern U.S. Air Force.

Baugh was one of the nearly 1,000 black pilots to graduate from Tuskegee Army Air Field between 1940 and 1946. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in November 1942. He was later assigned to the 99th Fighter Squadron in Sicily.

“It was scary,” Howard Baugh Sr. said of the combat flying expe-

Sunday, February 5, 2012 The Progress-Index, Petersburg, VA

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rience during a 2004 interview with The Progress-Index. “It all depended on what we were doing as to how scary it was, but it was really scary when we were getting shot at.”

For his service, the elder Baugh was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal with three Oak Leaf clusters, Air Force Commendation Medal, and the Air Force Outstanding Unit award.

Retired Army Col. Porcher Taylor of Petersburg is a member of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc., an organization dedicated to preserving the history of the Tuskegee Airmen.

According to the organization’s website, “Tuskegee Airmen” refers to all who were involved in the so-called “Tuskegee Experiment,” the Army Air Corps program to train African-Americans to fly and maintain combat aircraft. The Tuskegee Airmen included pilots, navigators, bom-

bardiers, maintenance and support staff, instructors, and all the personnel who kept the planes in the air.

“Segregation was rampant in those days,” Taylor said.

Taylor was part of the “Tuskegee Experiment”, attending the Alabama institute and participating in the Reserve Officer Training Corps program. Tuskegee reached university status in 1985.

“Blacks had to prove themselves,” Taylor said. He explained that is how the “Tuskegee Experiment” came about.

Taylor recounted that Howard Baugh Sr. is credited with shooting down one and a half enemy planes.

“You got a half a plane if you helped a buddy shoot one down,” Taylor explained. He added that Baugh’s friends suspect he may have shot down more than one Focke Wulf 190, one of the most Please see RED TAILS, Page 3

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infamous World War II German fighter aircraft.

Pressure from black media outlets of the time and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt led to the pilot training program. While Tuskegee wasn’t the only location to offer the program, according to Taylor, with other universities, including Hampton University, participating, it was “the main one.”

Eventually, 992 cadets would earn their wings through the program and another several thousand young men would receive the necessary training to serve as ground crew for the planes.

The black pilots flew aircraft including the P-51 Mustang, P-47 Thunderbolt, P-39 Airacobra and P-38 Lightning.

To be more easily identified as friendly fighters, the tails of the unit’s planes were painted red.

“They earned the nickname the red tails,” Taylor said. That unique identifier carries over into the organization dedicated to the history of the history-making aviators. Members of the Tuskegee Airmen

Inc. wear red blazers at events.

The younger Baugh said that after he retired from United Airlines as a pilot in 2001, he started going with his father to various events where the elder Baugh would speak.

“He really was all about education and fighting discrimination,” the younger

LUCASFILM/MCT

Above from left: Leslie Odom Jr., Michael B. Jordan, Nate Parker, Kevin Phillips, David Oyelowo and Elijah Kelley portray some of the heroic Tuskegee Airmen in a scene from the Lucasfilm action film ‘Red Tails,’ which debuted in theaters Jan. 20.

Baugh said. That included discrimination against all minorities, including women and homosexuals, he noted.

David Baugh, another of the elder

Baugh’s sons, said that his father told him one time that if he could get up, put his gear on and make it to the plane without throwing up, “He’d be OK.”

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PATRICK KANE/PROGRESS-INDEX PHOTO

Howard Baugh Jr., front, and David Baugh talk about their father, one of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, Howard Baugh Sr. Members of Petersburg-based Howard Baugh Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc. are excited about the release of ‘Red Tails,’ a movie about the African-American World War II pilots.

Office (804) 733-1428 • Fax (804) 733-1032 Email: gunnstaxserv@aol.com The Progress-Index, Petersburg, VA Sunday, February 5, 2012

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‘I was Martin’s alter ego’

Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker follows Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Atlanta in 1960 to serve on King’s executive staff

BY MARKUS SCHMIDT STAFF WRITER

PETERSBURG — The Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker has spent most of his life in the shadow of Civil Rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But Walker’s influence on the movement can not be underestimated. Throughout the 1960s, Walker served as King’s chief of staff — and used Petersburg as a blueprint for a movement that would take the nation by storm.

America would never be the same again.

“So much of his wisdom has made us a better nation and a better people and a better world,” Walker said last month at a Martin Luther King Day celebration at First Baptist Church on Harrison Street.

Walker, a Massachusetts native, came to Petersburg in the mid1950s to accept the ministry at Gillfield Baptist Church — the second oldest black congregation in the city and one of the oldest in the country.

Light-skinned, 6-feet tall, with horn-framed glasses and a thick mustache, Walker was a man who was an aggressive debater and even a bit egocentric, according to friends. He had a degree in chemistry and a divinity degree from Virginia Union University in Richmond, where he had first met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1952.

The two aspiring preachers stayed in touch.

“Both of us were the sons of preachers, and both of us wanted to become preachers,” Walker said in a previous interview with T4

PATRICK KANE/PROGRESS-INDEX PHOTO

The Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker speaks about his close associate, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during a MLK Jr. memorial program Jan. 16, at First Baptist Church Harrison Street, Petersburg.

In 1960, Walker left the pulpit of Gillfield Baptist Church in Petersburg to serve as chief of staff and executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The Progress-Index. when he was invited by Walker to From Atlanta, King followed speak at the 21st Annual ConvenWalker’s efforts to desegregate tion of the Virginia State NAACP. public schools here. Impressed At Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, King with the success and efficiency of the local civil rights movement, King recruited its key members for his personal staff. He took them with him to Atlanta and around the world so they would apply what they had accomplished in Petersburg on a much bigger level.

Walker eventually became King’s chief of staff and — Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, key executive director of the player in civil rights movement Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King had founded. “The fact that Dr. King selected me to lead the SCLC is proof that Petersburg played a big addressed an audience so big, that role in the civil rights movement,” many listeners had to assemble in Walker said. “The SCLC used the other churches, to which the local model of the movement that sound of King’s speech was broadwe had in Petersburg and applied cast. it to the entire South. That was a Following the meeting, King critical strategy.” went over to Walker’s house on 312 King first came to the city in 1956, Dunlop St. in the city’s Fifth Ward.

“So much of his wisdom has made us a better nation and a better people and a better world.”

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CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

In this photo from the collection of the Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker and Theresa Walker, the young Walker, right, meets with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Walker served as chief of staff and executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference throughout the 1960s.

The Walker residence was a modern home, with prints of Chinese and Indian figures on the walls in the living room.

“We had dinner together,” Walker said. “I think we sent out for barbecue ribs. Joseph Owens, who owned a dry cleaners in the city,

picked them up. Dr. King loved spare ribs.”

Walker’s wife, Theresa Ann Walker, had asked members of the local parish club to join them that night. “We were just a group of Please see WALKER, Page 5

WALKER

Continued from Page 4

young ladies,” Ann Walker said.

“My husband told me that we should host the dinner for Dr. King and other local members of the movement who were there.

We took a picture with him that day, right in our living room.”

Ann Walker has to think about her thoughts about her first meeting with King. “Well, he really was just an ordinary person,” she said. “He had a great sense of humor.” Yet she said that she had always much respect for him. “I was always in awe, because he had the aura of a minister,” she said. “My husband called him Mike, but I never did

that. I always called him Dr. King.

That’s just the way it was.”

In 1960, King returned to Petersburg to recruit members for his executive staff. The local civil rights movement was in full motion — the Rev. Milton Reid, Walker and the Rev. R.G. Williams had started their efforts to desegregate the city’s public library.

But Walker wouldn’t even get to see the fruits of his success for himself — King announced in July at Gillfield Baptist Church that the pastor would follow him to Atlanta.

Walker didn’t have to think much about going with King. “Dr. King had asked me if I was interested in joining his staff,” Walker said. “I told him, ‘Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do.’” But Walker presented King with some conditions, demanding to take two other local activists — Dorothy Cotton and Jim Wood —

with them to Atlanta. King agreed.

On May 29, 1960, Walker officially resigned as pastor of Gillfield Baptist Church. Leaving Petersburg was surprisingly easy for Walker. “I was excited, there were no sad feelings at all,” he said.

“Dr. King was very impressed with how I ran the Petersburg Improvement Organization that I had founded. He wanted me to take the same idea on a national level. Petersburg was the center of the civil rights movement in Virginia. We had about 200 active members, many were students from Virginia State College and Peabody High School. I left at the height of the movement in Petersburg.”

The Walker family departed Petersburg on Tuesday, Aug. 3, 1960. “I think we left around midnight,” Walker said. “We had engaged a moving van, and my wife and children — one girl, three boys — drove to Atlanta in our station wagon.”

Walker quickly settled in as the permanent executive director of SCLC. King soon found that he

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

In this 1960 photo, the Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, right, is arrested by Petersburg Police Chief W.E. Traylor during the second Petersburg Public Library sit-in on March 7, 1960 in Petersburg. Virginia State College student Lillian Pride watches from the back. couldn’t work without the pastor from Petersburg.

Walker called King “the leader,” but drove his own subordinates as hard as he drove himself. He

launched the SCLC’s fundraising campaign and set up SCLC outposts in numerous northern cities.

Please see WALKER, Page 6

Left: A letter to the Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker from Mrs. Coretta Scott King, dated Aug. 27, 1968, is on display at the Chester home of the Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee and Theresa Ann Walker.

Right: The Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker and his wife Theresa Ann Walker have many historic photos from the civil rights movement at their Chester home.

PATRICK KANE/PROGRESS-INDEX PHOTOS

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By 1963, the SCLC’s annual budget had risen “from zero” to $900,000. “I was Martin’s alter ego,” Walker said.

In the meantime, Walker’s wife Ann stayed at home with their four children. King was a regular guest at the Walker residence in an Atlanta suburb.

“He would visit us often and take our kids to the YMCA to go swimming with his own kids,” she said.

King returned to Petersburg several times after he had recruited Walker, for the last time on June 2, 1967 when he spoke at Jones Hall at Virginia State College.

In early 1968, King and his staff began preparing a 131mile march from Petersburg to Washington, as part of the Poor People’s Campaign. It was another effort

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We’ve got some difficult to create awareness — King days ahead. But it doesn’t had accused Congress of matter with me now. showing “hostility to the Because I’ve been to the poor” by spending military mountaintop.” funds “with alacrity and The next day, on April 4, generosity” and called on the government to rebuild America’s cities.

On April 3, he delivered his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” address at Mason Temple in Memphis.

The speech — Theresa Ann Walker, wife of the turned out to be Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker tragically prophetic.

“And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or 1968 — the same day King talk about the threats that was supposed to be in were out,” he said. “What Petersburg to start the would happen to me from march to Washington — he some of our sick white was killed on the balcony of brothers? Well, I don’t know what will happen now.

Please see WALKER, Page 8

“He [King] would visit us often and take our kids to the YMCA to go swimming with his own kids.”

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PATRICK KANE/PROGRESS-INDEX PHOTO/FILE

In this February 2010 photo, the Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker and wife Theresa Ann Walker, look through a handful of historic photos in their Chester home.

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ciently that we could do one thing, at one place, in the name of the Lord. That was the assembly of our government march on the right to vote.”

More than four decades after King’s death, Walker has nothing but appreciation for the lessons he has learned from his time with the King. “I just thank the Lord that my life intersected with his,” he said. “I know I am a better person for having met him and having worked with him.”

his hotel. It was a tragic twist in King’s connections with the Cockade City.

Walker was charged with the task to organize King’s funeral. The preparations kept most of King’s close associates too busy to think about what just had happened.

But in the years and decades to come, Walker found time to reflect on his time with the civil rights leader. “He is the only spiritual genius that western religion has produced,” Walker said.

“Dr. King convinced us to let the differences — Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker that separated us recede suffi-

“I just thank the Lord that my life intersected with his. I know I am a better person ...”

1831 - 1895 D r.R eb ecca C ru m p lerw as th e first A frican A m erican w o m an to earn an M .D .deg ree.

Sh e p racticed in B o sto n b riefly b u t m o v ed to R ich m o n d,V irg in ia,after th e C iv il W aren ded. Sh e w o rked w ith o th erb lack p h ysician s carin g fo rfreed slav es w h o w o u ld n o t h av e h ad an y typ e o f m edical care.

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CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

In this 1960 photo, the Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker walks through a welcoming crowd of supporters after being released from the city jail in Petersburg. “This has been a searching experience for us,” Walker told the crowd. “We knew it would be rough, but it was a lot worse than we expected.”

Dr. Shirlene T. Moten serves as Medical Director for Southside Family Practice, P.C. and is trained in Family Medicine, Geriatrics and Academic Family Medicine. Dr. Moten serves as Assistant Clinical Professor for the Virginia Commonwealth University, and James Madison University. She also previously served as the Chair of the General Practice department at Southside Regional Medical Center and on the Board of Directors for the Virginia Board of Family Practice. Dr. Moten has been practicing medicine now for over 20 years.

Congratulations Dr Moten!

Shirleen Tolbert Moten M.D.,MPH, FAAFP achieved the Degree of Fellow from the American Academy of Family Physicians.

24 S. Adams St., Petersburg, VA 23803 (804) 733-3739

Sunday, February 5, 2012 The Progress-Index, Petersburg, VA

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King Center shows Petersburg connections Digitized documents related to work and life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are released on MLK Jr. Day

BY PATRICK KANE STAFF WRITER

ATLANTA — The web woven between the pulpits of Petersburg, the struggles across Virginia and the nascent Southern Christian Leadership Conference are just a little clearer thanks to a major release of documents.

The digitized documents, announced on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and released by the King Center, are searchable by keywords and grouped by spotlights. The spotlights include letters from children, photos of King and significant speeches.

The Progress-Index conducted extensive research into King’s visits to Petersburg and the Tri-Cities area, publishing a series in 2009. King made at least seven

visits to the area, plucking several folks from the pulpits and civil rights movement in Petersburg to carry out the mission of the early SCLC. He was to hold a Poor People’s March from Petersburg to Washington, D.C. on April 4, 1968. Instead, King stayed in Memphis to support striking sanitary workers and was shot and killed at his hotel.

A brochure for the July 2, 1962, Nobel Peace Prize Day program at Virginia State College, now university, reads like a who’s who of local civil rights activists and is a prime example of the types of documents now easily accessible to the public.

Herbert Coulton, field secretary of SCLC led freedom songs. Hermanze E. Fauntleroy of the Petersburg Improvement Association offered a greeting.

Fauntleroy, who died in 2010, was chosen

by Petersburg City Council in 1973 as the city’s first black mayor.

Rev. Milton A. Reid of First Baptist Church gave the proclamation of Nobel Peace Prize Day. The Rev. Wyatt T. Walker gave an offertory appeal, followed by

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

in this photo from the collection of the Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker and Theresa Walker, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preaches in Petersburg.

Please see KING, Page 10

REBECCA WARD/PROGRESS-INDEX PHOTO/FILE

Herbert Coulton has numerous photos of he and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the walls of his Petersburg home. He holds a book chronicling the civil rights era, opened to a page with a photograph of the two. In 2010, Coulton decided to tell his own story. His self-published book titled, “In the Shadows of Giants,” is his account of his time in the civil rights movement and beyond.

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the Rev. Andrew White’s introduction of Dr. King.

The Rev. Curtis W. Harris, then state SCLC president, presided over the event.

Rev. Wyatt T. Walker Searches for individual figures with local connections turns up varying amounts of documents.

Some folks turn up no results, but Walker is tagged in 32 items, ranging from telegrams to pamphlets and news clippings.

Some are exciting, such as a June 1963 telegram to President John F. Kennedy reading “I am pleased to accept your invitation, I will attend the meeting in the East Room of the White House on Monday June 17th Four PM.”

Others show the day-today tasks Walker carried out as one of King’s closest associates, such as a March 17, 1962 telegram to the Sheraton Atlantic H o t e l r e s e r v i n g t wo rooms. Walker left Gillfield Baptist Church to serve as chief of staff and executive director of the SCLC. “I was Martin’s alter ego,” Walker told The Progress-Index during a 2009 interview.

Rev. Milton Reid Reid, who served as president of the Virginia SCLC and pastor of First Baptist Church, is tagged in four documents. They include a letter resigning from that position.

“You can look forward to my continuous support in the work of the SCLC,” he wrote on Oct. 4,1962, pledging $100 annually from First Baptist Church of Petersburg. Another letter notifies him that

there is limited seating available for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway.

Dorothy Cotton Cotton turns up in 10 search results, including a photo of an early SCLC meeting in an Atlanta restaurant. She left Petersburg to join the SCLC staff, and as the group’s education director for several years, she was one of the prominent women at the table.

Learn more The King Center was established in 1968 by widow Coretta Scott King.

Located in Atlanta, it is the largest collection of primary documents related to his life and works.

Nearly one million documents are digitized and CONTRIBUTED PHOTO available online for private research at http:// In this photo from the 1960s, Herbert Coulton of Petersburg is seen with Dr. Martin www.thekingcenter.org/ . Luther King Jr. Coulton began working with the late civil rights leader in 1962.

RICHARD L. CROWDER

Right: Herbert Coulton speaks at the Pentagon on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011.

Coulton, a native of Petersburg, was honored in Washington, D.C., for his civil rights works with the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Coulton was recruited by King in the early 1960s to serve as the field secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the states of Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee.

CONSTRUCTION “Rearranging the earth for you”

2101 Puddledock Road • Petersburg, VA F.M. WIGGINS/PROGRESS-INDEX PHOTO/FILE

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804-861-1361

Petersburg’s first African-American TV anchor

BY BETHANY ROTENBERRY STAFF WRITER

PETERSBURG – In 1970, Juanita Evans-Fells carved a place for herself in history when she was hired

by WXEX TV 8 as Petersburg’s first African-American news anchor.

Evans-Fells had majored in communications at Norfolk State University, but until that point she had no experience in the broadcast field.

At the time, she was working as a teacher at Peabody Middle School, but her interest in television journalism was strong enough to make her consider a second job.

“This was a seemingly limited area for African Americans, and I wanted to do something different,” Evans-Fells said. “I’ve always been interested in broadcast, so I went down to the station to apply.”

At first, Evans-Fells says that the television station employees put her off and told her she would get a call when the hiring boss came to town.

“They didn’t call me back for days, so I called them and they went ahead and scheduled me for an interview,” she said. “I read a script for them, and the hiring boss said that I was good and that they should give me a chance.”

Evans-Fells began reading the news on television each morning before she went to work as a teacher. Although she began her television career only two years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., she says that she didn’t receive any resistance or tension from the public once the job was hers.

“I had a fairly wide audience in my hometown of Lawrenceville and with the friends I had made here in Petersburg,” Evans-Fells said. “All my friends and students watched me every morning. One of the science professors at the school I taught at made his kids get up to watch me, too, so they could hear the barometer reading for the day.”

She continued to read the news for Channel 8 through 1970, but after about a year at the station she decided to leave the news anchor position.

“I had a 13-month-old baby, and I had to take her to the babysitter, go

PROGRESS-INDEX PHOTO/FILE

Juanita B. Evans-Fells of Petersburg became the area’s first female African-American news anchor when she joined WXEX TV8 in 1970.

She says she didn’t receive any tension or resistance from the public once the job was hers, but she was very much aware at the time of the significance of her job and the barriers she was breaking through. to the station, pick her up and take her to a different babysitter, and then go to school. It was too much,” Evans-Fells said. “I also got very sick for about a month and was unable to go to work at all, and that’s when I decided that I needed to quit something.”

She says that although her time on television was brief, it had a large impact on her career and her as an individual. “It gave me confidence. I am a very shy person, and before I didn’t even like to really look people in the eye for very long,” she said. “When I was teaching, I think my students at Peabody even

had mercy on me because they could tell I was so shy. But with this job I had to get used to being seen, to focus on the screen and the light on the camera.”

Without this newfound confidence, Evans-Fells says that she would not have been able to move forward and teach a wider, older audience of all races and sexes at Virginia State University.

Evans-Fells also says that she was very aware at the time of the significance of her job and the barriers she was breaking through.

“I did think it was significant,” she said. “I am told ... that I am the

Donald Fells. She also has a daughfirst African-American anchor in ter, Jewel Hairston, who is a dean at Virginia, but I am most certainly Virginia State University. the first in Petersburg.”

In 2008, Delegate Rosalyn R. Dance, D-Petersburg, put forth a resolution for Evans-Fells to be officially recorded as Petersburg’s first black news anchor.

Evans-Fells — Juanita B. Evans-Fells, first female Africanstill resides in American news anchor in Richmond Petersburg with her husband,

“It gave me confidence. I am a very shy person ... I didn’t even like to look people in the eye for very long.”

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