Journalist Simeon Booker, the Washington bureau chief of Jet and Ebony magazines for five decades, died Sunday at an assisted-living community in Solomons, Md., according to The Washington Post. Booker was 99 years old
Booker, who chronicled African-American life in the pages of Ebony and Jet magazines, including the eye-opening Mississippi lynching of Chicago boy Emmett Till, was the first full-time black reporter for The Post. He is credited with helping to deliver the story of Till’s murder to a national audience.
The paper says “few reporters risked more to chronicle the civil rights movement than Mr. Booker.”
In 2013, Booker was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame, and in 2015 he earned the George Polk Career Award.
