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By Sharron Hannon
Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor for the Atlanta Constitution, will deliver the 15th annual  Holmes-Hunter Lecture Nov. 11.
The lectureship honors Dr. Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the first African-American students to enroll at UGA and the first to receive baccalaureate degrees. Tucker will speak at 11 a.m. in the Tate Theater of the Tate Student Center.
“We are delighted to have a such an influential journalist as our speaker,” says Victor Wilson, assistant to President Michael F. Adams and organizer of the event.
In her capacity as editorial page editor, Tucker is responsible for guiding the development of the Constitution’s opinion policies on everything from foreign-policy issues to local school-board races. Her considerable reporting experience includes covering local governments, national politics, crime and education, and filing dispatches from Africa and Central America. Her syndicated column appears in several newspapers across the country, and she is also a frequent commentator on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Tucker serves as co-chairman of the board of directors of the International Women’s Media Foundation and is on the advisory board of the Poynter Institute. She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. A graduate of Auburn University, she also was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
Holmes and Hunter-Gault graduated from UGA in 1963, with bachelor’s degrees in science and journalism respectively. Following graduation, Dr. Holmes became the first African-American student admitted to the Emory University School of Medicine. At the time of his death on Oct. 26, 1995, he was an orthopedic surgeon in Atlanta, associate dean and a member of the faculty of Emory University School of Medicine, and chairman of the orthopedic unit at Grady Memorial Hospital.
Hunter-Gault wrote for The New York Times for eight years and then was long associated with PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Following an assignment as chief Africa correspondent for National Public Radio, she accepted her current position as CNN International bureau chief in Johannesburg. Her numerous awards for reporting include two Peabody Awards for her coverage of Africa. Her memoir, In My Place, was published in 1992.
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