THENABJ
CONVENTION’ S
NABJ Conventions: Where Journalists and Politicians Meet
One thing NABJ members have come to expect at our conventions, but doesn’ t always happen, is the appearance of national and international newsmakers. Among this long list of people are political leaders Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Bob Dole, Jack Kemp, and civil rights activists Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
Foreign dignitaries, including Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia, and Abdoulaye Wade, former President of Senegal, were also convention guests. And so were Lt. Gen. Julius W. Becton Jr., who addressed the first NABJ convention in 1976, and Gen. Colin Powell, the first Black chairman of the joint chiefs of staff of the U. S. military, who gave the keynote address at the organization’ s 15th convention in New York City in 1989.
And the NABJ convention has been a magnet for some of the nation’ s top Black musical performers, filmmakers, comedians and actors – people like Danny Glover, Mary Wilson, Prince, Kirk Franklin, Robin Harris and Tom Joyner.
Also, celebrities like Spike Lee, Alfre Woodard, Tyler Perry, Chance the Rapper, The Whispers, Kerry
Washington and John David Washington and a trove of athletic superstars, like Lebron James, are constant sightings at NABJ.
“ And it gets even better,” said Wayne Dawkins, NABJ’ s historian and author of three books about the association. In Dallas, we had the Black cowboy rodeo” in 1986, which was a major event at the NABJ Convention that year.
But no one generated more attention at our annual gathering than Donald
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