Michele Clark was the first black female news correspondent for CBS. While working at the station, Clark established herself as one of the best and brightest reporters on television during the 1970s.

Clark was a graduate of Roosevelt University in Chicago. After graduating, she worked various jobs before joining the CBS team at its Chicago affiliate, WBBM-TV station as a newswriter. She later completed a program “Broadcast and Print Journalism for Minorities” at Columbia University before being assigned as a General Assignment Reporter. She was the only woman reporter at the station for one year.

Proving to be an excellent reporter, Clark was given assignments that were usually assigned to men. In 1972, she covered the presidential primaries and at the Democratic Convention, she was promoted to a correspondent. Later that year, Clark was reassigned to work in Washington, D.C., where she CBS News Washington correspondent.

Clark commuted between Washington and Chicago to visit family members. On her way home to spend a month for Christmas in Chicago with her family, she was one of the 44 people killed when a United Air Line plane crashed on December 8, 1972, near Chicago’s Midway Airport. There are some who believe that the plane crash might not have been an accident.

In honor of Clark, the journalism program which she had completed at Columbia University, funded by CBS, NBC, and the Ford Foundation, was renamed the Michele Clark Fellowship Program for Minority Journalists.

sources:

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKclarkM.htm