Carole Simpson

Carole Simpson (born December 7, 1940) is an American retired broadcast journalist, news anchor, and author. She is the first African-American woman to anchor a major United States network newscast. Simpson, a graduate of the University of Michigan, began her career on radio at WCFL in Chicago, Illinois, and in 1965 she became the first woman and first African-American woman to broadcast radio news in Chicago. Simpson was later hired at WBBM. She moved to television at Chicago's WMAQ and on to NBC News in 1975, becoming the first African-American woman to anchor a major network newscast. She joined ABC News in 1982, and was an anchor for the weekend edition of World News Tonight from 1988 until October 2003. She became the first woman of color to moderate a presidential debate when she moderated the debate held between George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot, at Richmond, Virginia, in 1992. That same year she was the recipient of the Journalist of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. Simpson is on the Advisory Council at the International Women's Media Foundation. She retired from ABC News in 2006 to begin teaching journalism at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, where she taught until 2019.