At the time, people of color at the paper were relatively rare; more recently they made up about 26 percent of the newsroom (nine percent are Black) and 32 percent of the company as a whole, and The Times has established a fellowship program that attracts a great number of journalists of color.
In New York, Ms. Kennedy worked on the Metro Desk and was promoted to Long Island bureau chief. She then sought and was given the job of real estate writer.
“She loved real estate,” Lena Williams, another Black reporter who worked at The Times and was a close friend of Ms. Kennedy’s, said. “She was one of the first to see gentrification in Crown Heights and Harlem. She was writing real estate stories and turning them into lifestyle stories.”
Her dream beyond that, Ms. Williams said, was to work for the Styles section. Ms. Kennedy was an accomplished cook and knowledgeable about fashion, interior design and architecture. She was disappointed when she was told that she was “not ready” for Styles, Ms. Williams said, though she occasionally freelanced for the section anyway.
Mr. Delaney said that “you’re not ready” was a common explanation when a Black reporter was denied a move. “That was the kind of stuff we faced all the time,” he said. “That’s what we had to overcome.”
Shawn Graves Kennedy was born on June 8, 1947, in Chicago. Her father, Lt. Col. James Vincent Kennedy, was one of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-Black corps of elite pilots; he completed his training too late to see combat in World War II but became a career Air Force officer and flew missions in Korea and Vietnam. He received degrees in electrical engineering and worked on the Apollo space program.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/16/business/media/shawn-g-kennedy-dead.html
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