Pulitzer Prize winner to visit UF on Monday

April 6, 2011

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Les Payne, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, editor and author, will speak at 6:30 April 11 in 170 Pugh Hall Auditorium on the University of Florida campus.

He will speak about the Soweto uprising and relate the South African revolt to today’s protests in North Africa and the Middle East. Payne is touring the country speaking on the 35th anniversary of the Soweto uprising. His groundbreaking series on the uprising was instrumental in bringing the reality of apartheid to the American consciousness and contributed, ultimately, to the transition to majority rule in 1994.

For more than a quarter of a century, Payne served as Newsday’s associate editor, local and national reporter and foreign correspondent and columnist; he also served as Newsday’s New York editor, and his news staffs won every major award in journalism, including six Pulitzer Prizes.

In 1968, as an investigative reporter, Payne covered the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther Jr., and in the 1970s, he covered the Black Panther Party. He won a Pulitzer Prize for The Heroin Trail in 1974, which was a Newsday series in 33 parts that traced the international flow of heroin from the poppy fields of Turkey to the veins of drug addicts in New York City. As a Newsday correspondent, Payne reported extensively from Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the United Nations.

As one of the founders and former presidents of the National Association of Black Journalists, Payne has worked to improve media fairness and employment practices. Payne was born in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and served six years in the U.S. Army where he ran the Army’s newspaper while on assignment in Vietnam.

A reception and book signing will follow the speech in the Keene Faculty Lounge.

Payne’s visit to UF is co-sponsored by the Levin College of Law, the UF Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations, UF Center for African Studies, UF College of Journalism and Communications and the Center for Humanities and the Public Sphere.