CHICAGO, May 24 (UPI) -- Vernon Jarrett, a civil rights crusader whose syndicated columns chronicled the black experience for 30 years in the United States, died Sunday of cancer. He was 83.
Jarrett left Paris, Tenn., for Chicago in 1946 and joined the Chicago Defender, the largest black newspaper in the United States. He became the Chicago Tribune's first African-American columnist in 1970 and moved to the rival Chicago Sun-Times in 1983 where he remained until his retirement in 1994.
The son of two schoolteachers, Jarrett had an encyclopedic knowledge of history from slavery through the civil rights era. He taught history and journalism at the University of Illinois at Chicago and other colleges.
A pioneer in radio and television, Jarrett hosted a long-running Sunday public affairs show on WLS-TV. His columns were influential in the 1983 election of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor.
Jarrett was a founding member of the National Association of Black Journalists and president of the Chicago chapter.
