Iconic journalist Charles Stone Jr. dies at 89. 

Many who helped launch the NABJ credited Stone as the driving force behind its founding, said the association’s current president Bob Butler. “Chuck chaired the first meeting and became the first president. He provided the rudder that steered NABJ at a time when being a member was not always easy. Some employers back then told members to choose between their jobs and NABJ,” Butler said in a news release.

After serving as a Tuskegee Airman in World War II, Stone was a writer and editor at influential Black publications in New York, Washington and Chicago through the early 1960s, using his writing to urge the Kennedy administration to advance the cause of civil rights.

Subsequently, he served as an adviser to U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell of New York.

His reputation grew after he was hired as the first Black columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, where he worked as a columnist and editor from 1972 to 1991. He was known for being outspoken on discrimination, police brutality and racism.