Charlayne Hunter-Gault, an award winning journalist and activist, will sign books February 4 at 5:30 p.m. in the GCC Library. A limited numbers of books will be available for purchase. Hunter-Gault is the author of three books, the latest of which is To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement, a historical narrative for young readers grade nine and up. It was published in 2012 by The New York Times and Roaring Brook Press.

She is in New Haven to receive the Visionary Leadership Award from the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, which honors a leader whose trailblazing work is impacting the world.

Hunter-Gault’s other two books are New News Out of Africa: Uncovering the African Renaissance 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.  

Hunter-Gault’s impressive career began at the New Yorker and later, The New York Times. She spent 20 years with PBS, where she worked as a national correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. In 1997 she began working at National Public Radio; during her tenure she won two Emmys. She also received the 1986 Journalist of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and the 1990 Sidney Hillman Award.

In 1999, Hunter-Gault was named CNN's Johannesburg bureau chief and correspondent. She spent six years at CNN and, in 1998, was awarded a Peabody for excellence in broadcast journalism for her work on “Apartheid's People.” She returned to National Public Radio in 2005 as a Special Correspondent.

Over the years, Hunter-Gault has been the recipient of numerous awards. She was awarded the Good Housekeeping Broadcast Personality of the Year; an Amnesty International award for her Human Rights reporting, especially for her PBS Series, “Rights and Wrongs, a Human Rights Television magazine”; the American Women in Radio and Television Award; and two awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for excellence in local programming.

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. 

She is  currently Africa Bureau Chief for Essence magazine and serves on the board of and is a frequent contributor to The Root. She also is on the board of The Carter Center, 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 a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.