Simeon Booker celebrates 50 years with Jet

Jet, Nov 17, 2003

Celebrating 50 years as a reporter, D.C. Bureau Chief and war correspondent with JET Magazine, Simeon Booker was praised by hundreds of friends, journalists and well-wishers at an afternoon reception at the company's office in Washington.

Besides the oral tributes, guests brought many unusual gifts to mark the milestone in journalism.

Former JET reporter Roy Betts, now a U.S. Postal Service public relations officer, brought an enlarged facsimile of a U.S. postage stamp with Booker's picture on it.

Olympic track champion Mal Whitfield presented a framed set of flags of African countries. Public relations expert Ofield Dukes contributed an inscribed clock while Frederick Douglass IV, the great-great-great grandson of the famed abolitionist, gave a history book.

Greetings also came from D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, officials of both the Democratic and Republican parties, and numerous government aides, including Ambassador Ruth Davis, the first Black woman Foreign Service director.

Former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater and Newsweek Magazine editor Eleanor Clift gave tributes to the journalist who established headquarters of the first Black business in downtown Washington decades ago.

Booker was accompanied by his wife of 30 years, Carol, the general counsel of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors.

After he won a coveted Harvard Nieman Fellowship and became the first full-time Black reporter on the Washington Post newspaper, he joined Johnson Publishing Co.

At JET Magazine, he continued his illustrious record by covering firsthand civil rights events in the South, starting with the Emmett Till murder case. He also covered the Vietnam and Grenada wars.

Booker was the first Black to win the National Press Club's Fourth Estate Award.