Simeon Booker

About Simeon Booker

Simeon Booker, a 1951 Nieman Fellow, retired in January 2007 as the Washington bureau chief of Jet magazine, where he had worked since 1954. In 1982 he received the National Press Club’s Fourth Estate Award. He recently wrote in Jet about his 1961 coverage of the Freedom Rides, describing the telephone call he made to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy that resulted in federal protection for the riders. He is writing a memoir of his coverage of the civil rights movement and the administrations of 10 U.S. Presidents.

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Simeon Booker, NF ’51

By Simeon Booker• 75th Anniversary• September 24, 2013

Working for Jet magazine, Booker covered the civil rights movement for 53 years The Nieman program under Louis M. Lyons was eons ahead of the nation’s press when it came to race relations. In 1950, when I became … Read more

1956: A Negro Reporter at the Till Trial

By Simeon Booker• Opinion• December 15, 1999

[This article originally appeared in the January 1956 issue of Nieman Reports.] Millions of words were written about the recent Till murder trial, but the most dramatic and, by far, the most significant development during the hectic week in the … Read more