Did you know that CBS News’ first-ever Black White House correspondent was born in Philadelphia and started his career here?
His name was Ed Bradley, and he was born in Philly in 1941. After attending Cheyney University in Delaware County, he taught elementary school and began volunteering at the Philly FM radio station WDAS. The station started paying him after he dedicated two days to covering a race riot.
Bradley eventually landed a job in New York as a reporter at the radio station WCBS, and CBS News later hired him to cover news internationally — first in Paris, and later in Vietnam and Cambodia to cover the Vietnam War. Once he returned to the states, Bradley followed Jimmy Carter during his presidential campaign and became CBS' White House correspondent in 1976.
What gained Bradley the most notoriety, though, was when he became a mainstay on the popular news magazine “60 Minutes.” He started working on the show in 1981 and became a fixture over his two and a half decades on the program. People got to know him as a dynamic journalist who could report out exposés while also — in the words of a former colleague — being able to “put people at ease and [connect]” with those he interviewed.
Bradley passed away from leukemia in 2006, at age 65. Over the course of his life, he earned over a dozen Emmys, four Peabodys, and the National Association of Black Journalists’ Lifetime Achievement award, among other accolades.
Today, you can find a few tributes to Bradley near where he worked at his first journalism job in Philly. In 2015, a section of City Ave in Wynnefield was renamed “Ed Bradley Way” in his honor. He’s also been honored with a historical marker in the same neighborhood, and a mural in Belmont.
