Interim Chair of the Journalism and Mass Communications Department, DeWayne Wickham will receive the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Lifetime Achievement Award this summer at their annual convention in New Orleans. As one of the organization’s highest honors, Wickham was voted for it by the NABJ Board of Directors at their winter meeting.
“I am still trying to get over the excitement of all my friends call me about this,” said Wickham. “I haven’t digested it yet, but it is humbling. This recognition shows the work I have done over three and a half decades. It shows my achievements.”
Wickham along with 43 others founded this organization for black journalists. Today it serves as the largest organization for journalists of color. In addition to being a founder, Wickham has also served as the organization’s president in 1987.
“NABJ was founded attending a conference in Washington,” he said. “We talked about common concerns and shared problems and decided that we needed an organization so we could be one. It was only one black journalist here and there and we wanted to bring everyone together. We wanted to survive and make a way for others into the field.”
Wickham says he never expected NABJ to grow into the organization it has become. He has helped start chapters in Greensboro, Norfolk, Va., Delaware State University, and N.C. A&T. “For our first convention in 1976 at Texas Southern University we had a banquet at the motel where they were staying. There was no banquet room. We were eating pizza poolside off of an inner state. I could not imagine NABJ would blossom into this forceful organization it has become.”
He says he started his passion for journalism by reading. “I was one of the kids to get the newspaper in the evening for the adults. On my way back to deliver the paper, I would read the newspaper. The more I read newspapers, the more I wanted to write for them.”
Today, in addition to his duties at A&T, he is also a columnist for USA Today, a founder of the Association of Black Media Workers, and the founder of the Trotter Group, an organization of black columnists.
“I love Mr. Wickham,” said Tijera Roberson a sophomore public relations major. “He was my teacher for news writing and everything that he has done in his career is amazing.” Roberson goes on to add that Wickham’s award is well deserved, and it brings a lot of experience to the journalism department.
Wickham has worked for Baltimore’s Evening Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, correspondent for Black Enterprise magazine and U.S. News & World Report and commentator for CBS News.
“I have always been a juggler,” he said. “It’s a basic trait of journalist.”
Wickham doesn’t know what’s next for his career, but he’s ready for it. “Every day is a new challenge. Every day is another possibility, but I haven’t seen in my mind the end of the road yet.
- Necole Jackson, Register Reporter