Charlayne Hunter-Gault, an award-winning journalist, author and civil rights icon will serve as the keynote speaker at AUN’s 2013 Commencement ceremonies.

Ms. Hunter-Gault has worked for the The New Yorker Magazine, The New York Times, both of the American public broadcasting networks, PBS and NPR and served as the bureau chief for CNN in Johannesburg, South Africa.
She is a recipient of two National News and Documentary Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards, one for Apartheid’s People, a PBS NewHour series about South African life during apartheid.

Ms. Hunter-Gault is the author of In My Place, a memoir of the United States civil rights movement that recounts her experience as the first black woman to attend the University of Georgia. Her other books are News Out of Africa: Uncovering the African Renaissance and To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement.

Ms. Hunter-Gault also received the 1986 Journalist of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Journalists, the 1990 Sidney Hillman Award, the American Women in Radio and Television award, the Good Housekeeping Broadcast Personality of the Year Award, and a 2004 National Association of Black Journalists Award for her CNN series on Zimbabwe.
She has also received awards from Amnesty International for her human rights reporting.