Sarah-Ann Shaw, the Boston news legend who passed away last week at age 90, was a kind and thoughtful woman who mentored generations of journalists, Black and white, during her pioneering career in local media. But that warm and nurturing side of her character belied a tough inner core, committed to racial and social justice and above all possessed with a steely determination to tell the stories that needed to be told. No matter what news management demanded or wanted.
As a colleague of Sarah-Ann’s at WBZ-TV in Boston, I saw first-hand how she fought to cover our Black community as it deserved to be portrayed – not as the site of a shooting or drug deal gone awry, but in its many layers of social, political and cultural complexity. The aspirations of families to educate their children, open and grow businesses, and contribute to the rich fabric of Boston’s literary and artistic traditions were just as important to Sarah-Ann as anything said by any politician.
She was present in all the best ways. Listening. Learning. And reporting.
Her activist approach to news came to this daughter of Roxbury through her parents, Norris King Jr., a member of the old Democratic Club that leveraged votes for jobs and services, and Annie Bell Bomar King, who worked with Melnea Cass, “The First Lady of Roxbury,” to stand up for the Black community at City Hall and the State House. Sarah-Ann attended Girls Latin School, the first public college preparatory school for girls in the United States, in its iconic building in Codman Square, and studied at Boston University.
Her apprenticeship in justice was honed by attending public lectures by such figures as Paul Robeson and joining the NAACP Youth Council in the years Boston’s Black community swelled in size with migration from the South and the Caribbean.
She married jazz producer Kwame Shaw after leaving BU. Their daughter, Klare Shaw, who formerly served as executive director of the Boston Globe Foundation, survives her.
Sarah-Ann was working at the anti-poverty agency Action for Boston Community Development in the late 60s when she appeared on WGBH-TV’s “Say Brother” and soon became a regular contributor, providing insightful coverage of fights over school desegregation, urban renewal and expanding political representation for communities of color. Her deep roots in community organizations gave her stories texture and depth lacking in other reporting.
After the 1968 federal Kerner Commission report on unrest in Black America came out with scathing reviews of media coverage of minority communities, broadcasters went looking for talent to add balance to the airwaves. WBZ-TV hired Sarah-Ann in 1969 as the station’s first woman of color.
During her 31 years at the station, she subjected a series of news directors and general managers to the Shaw style of suasion — gentle but persistent moral logic that usually proved successful. “She shamed management into covering stories they didn’t want to run — stories that had an impact on communities of color,” said Azita Ghahramani, who worked with Shaw at WBZ in the 1990s. “She was such a presence in the newsroom, always fighting for the underdog. I remember her persistence, never raising her voice, but digging in a way to amplify the voices she wanted to be heard. She taught me how to be a respectful squeaky wheel.”
One thing Sarah-Ann never learned — or taught — was how to drive. There were many mornings when I picked up my friend and colleague at her house on Wenonah Street off Elm Hill Avenue or dropped her off in the evening. Our colleague Richard Chase, who lived closer, chauffeured her more often. “They were Black reporters at WBZ who came before her, like Walt Sanders and Charlie Austin,” said Chase, “but we were the only ones from the community. And she took it personally to make sure the voices of the community were heard on the air.”
Shaw was inducted into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame after her retirement from WBZ in 2000, and won many other honors throughout her career, including a National Association of Black Journalists Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. She was an active member of the local chapter, the Boston Association of Black Journalists, and a one-time regional director of the national group.
“Sarah-Ann Shaw didn’t just ‘talk the talk’ when as a journalist she educated the media and the powers to be with real talk about how issues impacted our community,” said Joyce Ferriabough Bolling, a political and media consultant who worked closely with Shaw. “She was a true activist at her core who loved this community.”
In honor of Shaw’s love of learning, books and libraries, Ferriabough Bolling said the Dudley branch should be named in her honor, echoing the tribute of naming the Allston-Brighton branch after the death of popular Boston City Councilor Brian Honan.
In my own career, I have seen few people measure up to Sarah-Ann’s role as a trailblazer. She was a daughter of Roxbury and held her community in the highest esteem.
Growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, I remember how negative images of our community in the media made me feel less than. These false representations contributed to an environment where people were afraid of me as a young black teen and put me under constant scrutiny as I became a Black man.
Creating and magnifying society’s fear was used by the media to gain ratings. This literally put me and all my Black brothers and sisters in danger. Police abuse, false imprisonment, systemic racism and discrimination are all fed from that false narrative. Sarah-Ann understood the damage of those messages to our society. She understood the harm caused by the blind desire for ratings at any cost, because she lived it. With her brilliance and tenacity, she educated the news directors, managers, producers, executives and video journalists like me. She demanded better from all of us but did it in a calm gentle way, like a loving mother does when talking to her child. She was stern when she needed to be, but more often than not her arguments would make you feel like, “Yeah, you’re right. I should have done it that way all along.”
Sarah-Ann’s legacy is the link she created between her own community and the media, which created a fuller picture of Greater Roxbury for those living in other neighborhoods or outside the city.
“I’ve tried to explain various ethnic and racial communities to people who don’t live in those communities,” she said in an interview. “I’ve tried to be a bridge.”
A wake for Sarah-Ann Shaw will be held on April 26 at the Davis Funeral Home on Walnut Avenue in Roxbury from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. A “celebration of life” will be held on April 27 at 11 a.m. at the Bethel AME Church on Walk Hill Street in Jamaica Plain.
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