Renee Poussaint

Journalist Renee Poussaint was born in New York City on August 12, 1944. Poussaint received her B.A. degree in English literature from Sarah Lawrence College in 1964 and her M.A. degree in African studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1970. She has also studied at Yale Law School and the Sorbonne in Paris, France.

In 1970, Poussaint began her career in television broadcasting working as a news correspondent at WBBM-TV in Chicago, Illinois. She went on to anchor ABC Evening News, substituting for Peter Jennings, as well as news segments on Good Morning America. She was a national correspondent for CBS and for ABC’s news magazine show Prime Time Live. Poussaint also anchored the local ABC evening news in Washington, D.C., for more than a decade. She reported from locations around the world, including Haiti, South Africa, and Uganda, and interviewed numerous historic figures.

In 2001, Poussaint and Camille Cosby, educator and producer, founded the National Visionary Leadership Project (NVLP), which uses various educational media to record, preserve, and distribute the stories of older generations of African Americans. The NVLP collection is archived at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. as a component of the broader “National Visionary Leadership Project Collection.” In 2004, Poussaint and Cosby co-authored the book A Wealth of Wisdom: Legendary African American Elders Speak.

Poussaint also founded Wisdom Works, a documentary production company. The company’s documentary Tutu and Franklin: A Journey towards Peace, aired on PBS in 2001 and was filmed at the slave port of Goree, Senegal. Her work as a documentary filmmaker has also appeared on Discovery, A&E, and Lifetime. In addition, she taught journalism at the University of Maryland.

Poussaint was the recipient of three national and seven local Emmy awards. As an independent consultant and community activist, Poussaint worked with nonprofit and community organizations. Her volunteer activities included tutoring, mentoring, and reading newspapers for the blind. Poussaint received honorary doctorates from Georgetown University and Mount Vernon College.

Renee Poussaint was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on January 17, 2013.

Poussaint passed away on March 4, 2022, at the age of 77.