Cynthia Tucker Haynes, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, will deliver the address at Bishop State Community College’s Commencement to be held on Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 6:00 p.m. in the Mobile Civic Center Arena located at 401 Civic Center Drive, Mobile, AL 36602.
More than 600 students have met the eligibility requirements for graduation. A former student from ITT Technical Institute will be among the graduates. Each year the college also recognizes graduates from fifty years ago. There are 248 members of the Class of 1967. Those in attendance will be recognized and given an opportunity to walk across the stage at graduation just as they did 50 years ago.
Cynthia Tucker Haynes is a syndicated columnist and a popular radio and television commentator. Her weekly column appears in newspapers around the country. It focuses on political and cultural issues, including income inequality, social justice and reform of the public education system.
She spent most of her career in the newspaper industry working as a reporter and editor. For seventeen years, Haynes served as editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution overseeing the newspaper’s editorial policies. She later worked as a Washington-based political columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. After leaving the newspaper, Haynes spent three years as a visiting professor at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Over the course of her career, she received numerous awards and honors. Haynes’ column was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the commentary category twice before winning the prestigious honor in 2007. She was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame in 2011 and received the David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism presented at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
A graduate of Auburn University, Haynes was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1988-1989 academic year. She is a native of Monroeville, Alabama and currently lives in Mobile.