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Photo credit: Askia Muhammad

DeWayne Wickham of USA Today and Gannett News Service with Valerie Jarrett, co-chair of the transition team for President-elect Barack Obama, at the opening session of the Trotter Group's 2008 annual meeting.

"We ran a campaign of vision and hope and looking towards the future. And he is a pragmatist . . . That's the part of him that will make him an extraordinary president," she said.

The meeting took place a week after the nation elected its first African American president. In addition to Jarrett and others from the Obama campaign, speakers from Howard University, the Washington Post, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the National Urban League, the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the State Department and the Republican Party met with the group.

Click here to read the columns.

“Black Voices in Commentary:
The Trotter Group”

[$15.95, August Press, November 2006, ISBN 0-9635720-9-1]

is 23 black columnists on subjects ranging from politics to Barney Fife.

The diversity of their voices is exhibited in a collection of their columns from the end of 2005 through the first half of 2006.

Order from August Press at:
(757) 727-5437 or www.augustpress.net
www.amazon.com or
Barnes & Noble www.bn.com.

For more information click here.

Archive
See our Archive of Past Commentary and Events

About the Trotter Group:
Columnists who 'can and will think black'

By DeWayne Wickham

The idea that a group of black columnists would come together to share our common experience and probe the soft underbelly of our craft is something Les Payne and I kicked around for several years. Whenever an event in the news struck our interest, or pricked our consciences, we'd talk about the need to bring a group of us together.

But given the many daily pressures that come with our jobs, it was painfully easy to let such a grand plan fall by the wayside. It always seemed to lack the immediacy that compels journalists to action.

Two things happened to change that.

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