Women's Resource Center of Sarasota County Hosts Luncheon Featuring Hunter-Gault

The Women’s Resource Center of Sarasota County (www.TheWomensResourceCenter.org), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to educating and empowering women in Sarasota County and enriching their lives, is hosting the Let Freedom Ring luncheon featuring keynote speaker Charlayne Hunter–Gault, a distinguished journalist, author, advocate and exemplary leader.

On Monday, Feb. 2 at 11:30 a.m., guests will have the opportunity to hear Hunter-Gault’s perspective on current events and glean from her experiences as a seasoned journalist and civil rights activist at the Sarasota Yacht Club. There will be question-and-answer period for the audience as well as a chance for attendees to meet Hunter-Gault after the discussion for a book signing, featuring To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement, one of her latest books.

An author of four books, Hunter-Gault is an award-winning journalist with more than 40 years in the industry. She covered national and international stories as a national correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer during her 20 years at PBS. Hunter-Gault became the African bureau chief for NPR in 1997 and joined CNN in April 1999. She was the first African-American woman to enroll at the University of Georgia and one of the first two African-American students to integrate the school in 1961. Her numerous honors include two Emmy awards and two Peabody awards.

Tickets are $75 and benefit the Women’s Resource Center of Sarasota County’s many programs and services for women in the community. Call 941-366-1700 or visit www.TheWomensResourceCenter.org for RSVP and information. The event chair is WRCSC board member Audrey Coleman and the co-chair is Dr. Willa Bernhard, a past WRCSC board member.

Twenty students from Booker High School will be in attendance to benefit from Hunter-Gault’s life lessons as a leader and an advocate.

About the Women’s Resource Center of Sarasota County

For over 30 years, the countywide not-for-profit agency has provided women with life skills training, career services and scholarships to achieve their highest potential. For more information, visit www.TheWomensResourceCenter.org or call 941.366.1700.

About Charlayne Hunter-Gault

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an award-winning journalist with more than 40 years in the industry. A trailblazer in her own right, she is the author of four books — the most recent, Corrective Rape, a book about violence against gay women in South Africa, soon to be published Agate e-book and To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement, a historical narrative for young readers grade nine through young adult published in 2012 by The New York Times and Roaring Brook Press; paperback in 2013 by Squarefish. 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, published by Farrar Strauss and Giroux and in paperback by Vintage Press.

Hunter-Gault joined National Public Radio in 1997 after 20 years with PBS, where she worked as a national correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. She joined CNN in April 1999 from NPR, where she worked as the network’s chief correspondent in Africa and was awarded a Peabody in 1998 for her coverage of the continent. In 2005, Hunter-Gault returned to NPR as a special correspondent. 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 also frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The Root.

Her numerous honors include two Emmy awards and two other Peabody awards — the first for her work on “Apartheid’s People,” a NewsHour series about South African life during apartheid. Over the years, Hunter-Gault has been the recipient of numerous other awards and citations from the National Association of Black Journalists, including for her CNN series on Zimabawe; the Sidney Hillman Foundation, the American Women in Radio and Television, and Amnesty International for her Human Rights reporting, especially her PBS Series, Rights and Wrongs, a Human Rights Television magazine. In 2014, she received the International Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum at the historic Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. In 2010, she received the D. C. Choral Arts Society Humanitarian award and in 2011, she was honored with both the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award and the W. Haywood Burns award from New York’s Neighborhood Defender Service. In August 2005, she was inducted in the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.