Tenacity finally broke color barrier for reporter

Edwyna Goodwin Anderson remembers the first time she applied for a newspaper job in Flint.

Edwyna Goodwin Anderson Age: 71 Home: Bloomfield Hills Background: Retired general counsel for Duquesne Light Co. in Pittsburgh, Pa. Member of the state Public Service Commission, 1980-88. Former member and chairwoman of the Mott Community College Board of Trustees. Former Genesee County assistant prosecutor. Flint Journal reporter during the 1960s. Education: Detroit College of Law. Personal: Divorced. Two daughters. Memorable experience: After joining The Journal’s staff, Anderson was sent to cover a medical society meeting at the Detroit Athletic Club, which did not admit blacks or women. Anderson had to enter through the back entrance.

Over the telephone, The Flint Journal’s society editor was impressed with her credentials until Anderson told her she was black, Anderson said.

“She was in stunned silence for what seemed like moments but was probably just seconds,” Anderson said.

“She said, ‘I’d love to have you, but the women whose homes you’d be going to might have some objections.’ She apologized profusely, and that was the end of that.”

In the 1950s, few women and even fewer blacks were hired as journalists.

But Anderson, who had worked for her father’s newspaper in Oklahoma, tried again a few years later.

“Kennedy was being elected, and school desegregation issues had all arisen. And I just thought I wanted to be in the newspaper business,” she said. “I met with (Editor) Ralph Curry and Bob Martin, and they said they wanted to hire me on my qualifications.”

Anderson became the first black female reporter at The Journal, covering a variety of topics before leaving to start a family.

Anderson went to law school and became the first black female attorney in Genesee County.

She spent seven years as an assistant Genesee County prosecutor under former Prosecutor Robert F. Leonard.

She later sat on the Mott Community College Board of Trustees and became its chairwoman.

Anderson was appointed to the Michigan Public Service Commission in 1980 and spent eight years on that board before accepting a job as general counsel for Duquesne Light Co., in Pittsburgh, Pa.

She retired from that job in 1995.

— Ken Palmer