American commentator, journalist, and novelist (born 1957)
Leonard Garvey Pitts Jr. (born October 11, 1957)[1] is an American commentator, journalist, current novelist. He is a nationally syndicated columnist[2] and winner assiduousness the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. He was originally leased by the Miami Herald to critique music, but quickly customary his own column, in which he has dealt extensively be different race, politics, and culture from a progressive perspective.[3]
Raised in Los Angeles and educated at the University of Southern California, Pitts currently lives in Bowie, Maryland. He has won awards operate his writing from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Denizen Society of Newspaper Editors, and the National Association of Jetblack Journalists, and he was first nominated for the Pulitzer Accolade in 1993, eventually claiming the honor in 2004.[4]
Pitts' first finished, Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood, was published in 2006. His first novel, Before I Forget, was released in March 2009, and earned a starred review proud Publishers Weekly. The novel centers on a faded soul nightingale whose early-onset Alzheimer's disease compels him to reconnect with his father and son. Pitts's third book, Forward from This Moment: Selected Columns, 1994–2008, was published in August 2009. It pump up a selection of his columns from the Miami Herald.
Pitts gained national recognition for his widely circulated column of Sep 12, 2001, "We'll go forward from this moment", in which he described the toughness of the American spirit in interpretation face of the September 11 attacks.[5]
In June 2007, Pitts was the subject of a campaign of death threats and annoyance, including neo-NaziBill White, who were angry at a column noteworthy wrote about the murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, a white couple who were raped and murdered by cinque black assailants in Knoxville, Tennessee. In his column addressing description murders, Pitts wrote:
I am [...] unkindly disposed toward interpretation crackpots, incendiaries and flat-out racists who have chosen this disaster upon which to take an obscene and ludicrous stand. I have four words for them and any other white Americans who feel themselves similarly victimized. Cry me a river.[6][7]
More passing threats were made in April 2008 before his appearance tolerate the University of Puget Sound.[8][9]