Howie Evans, the Amsterdam News’ sports editor emeritus, is among the group of legendary and esteemed Black journalists that will be inducted into the Black Sportswriters Hall of Fame (BSWHOF), housed at North Carolina A&T State University, on Saturday, April 11. Evans, who passed away last April at the age of 91 after a long bout with dementia, will enter the BSWHOF as part of its second class under the Black Press Pioneer category.
Evans’ fellow Black Press Pioneers that will be inducted posthumously are Bill Nunn of the Pittsburgh Courier, the Los Angeles Sentinel’s Brad Pye Jr., the Philadelphia Tribune’s Claude Harrison Jr., the Chicago Defender’s Fay Young, and Russell “R.L.” Stockard of the Louisiana Weekly.
Evans, Nunn, Pye Jr., Harrison Jr., Young, and Stockard were instrumental in reshaping the landscape of sports and journalism, and by extension the wider American social and racial architecture. They were on the frontlines unwaveringly and fearlessly advocating for civil rights, racial equality, economic balance, and merit based opportunities for Black men and women on playing fields, athletic courts, newsrooms, and this country’s expansive workforce long before diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) became a commonly used phrase in the American vernacular.
The trailblazing journalists also lent their voices to global causes. Evans, for example, prominently fought for the eradication of the brutally oppressive institutionalized governmental system of apartheid in South Africa, which was in place from 1948 to 1994.
Accordingly, four men who have carried the illuminating torches passed to them by the pioneers will also be 2026 BSWHOF inductees, selected by a panel of journalists encompassing every region of the country. They are Rob Parker, Garry D. Howard, Clifton Brown, and Ron Thomas.
Parker, a son of the New York City borough of Queens, is the founder of BSWHOF. He currently is a Fox Sports national radio host and was the first Black sports columnist at both the Detroit Free Press and Newsday; and is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame.
The Bronx, New York, raised Howard was the first Black president of the Associated Press Sports Editors, former assistant managing editor for sports at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and a member of the NABJ Hall of Fame.
Brown was the first Black golf writer at The New York Times, who also covered the NBA’s “Bad Boy” Detroit Pistons for the Detroit Free Press and the NFL for the Sporting News and other publications.
Thomas was the first NBA reporter for USA Today, the first chair of the NABJ Sports Task Force, and the founding director of the journalism program at Morehouse College. He also was an NABJ Legacy Award recipient.
The induction ceremony is supported by N.C. A&T’s student chapters of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and the Associated Press Sports Editors. It will be held at the N.C. A&T Student Center, 1403 John W. Mitchell Drive from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.