Jesse Holland facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jesse Holland
|
|
|---|---|
Holland prepares to sign copies of Black Panther: Who Is The Black Panther? at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C.
|
|
| Born |
Jesse James Holland Jr.
June 28, 1971 Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
|
| Alma mater | University of Mississippi |
| Occupation | Broadcast journalist, author |
Jesse James Holland Jr. (born June 28, 1971) is an American journalist, author, and teacher. He is famous for being one of the first African American journalists to cover the Supreme Court full-time. He was also the second African American editor of his college newspaper, The Daily Mississippian. Today, he sometimes hosts Washington Journal on C-SPAN.
Contents
Jesse Holland's Journey
Jesse James Holland Jr. grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. He was one of four children. His neighborhood, Orange Mound, Memphis, was the first African American neighborhood in the nation. His parents, Jesse James Holland and Yvonne Boga Holland, were both school teachers. They also owned and ran a family farm in Mississippi.
Holland went to the University of Mississippi. He earned a bachelor's degree in journalism and English in 1994. Later, in 2012, he received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Goucher College.
While in college, he worked as a reporter for The Oxford Eagle. He also worked for The Daily Mississippian, his college newspaper. He started as a reporter, then became an editor, and finally the editor-in-chief. He was only the second Black editor of the paper. He even helped write a comic strip for it called Hippie and The Black Guy.
Working as a Journalist
Jesse Holland became a reporter for the Associated Press (AP) in 1994. The AP is a big news organization. He started as an intern in South Carolina. Before that, he interned at The New York Times and other places.
He quickly became a legal reporter for the AP. He covered important trials, like the Susan Smith trial. For this work, he won an award called the John L. Dougherty Excellence Award. Later, he covered the South Carolina government as a statehouse reporter.
In 1999, he moved to the AP's office in Albany, New York. There, he covered education and state government. He also reported on Hillary Clinton's first run for the U.S. Senate.
Since 2000, Holland has been stationed in Washington, D.C.. He covered race and ethnicity topics for the AP. He is one of the few reporters in Washington, D.C., who has reported on all three main parts of the U.S. government. He covered Congress from 2000 to 2001 and again from 2001 to 2005. He was a White House reporter from 2000 to 2001. From 2009 to 2014, he was a Supreme Court reporter.
In 2019, Holland left the Associated Press. He took a new job at the Library of Congress. He became a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Residence there.
Teaching and Education
In 2016, Jesse Holland was named a Visiting Distinguished Professor at the University of Arkansas. He taught about ethics in journalism. Ethics means doing the right thing.
He now teaches creative nonfiction and multimedia storytelling at Goucher College. He has also taught journalism ethics at Georgetown University and New York University.
Books by Jesse Holland
In 2005, Jesse Holland took a break from the AP to write his first book. It was called Black Men Built The Capitol: Discovering African American History In and Around Washington, D.C.. It was published in 2007.
His second book, The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in The White House, came out in 2017. This book won a silver medal for U.S. history.
Holland has also written books for young adults! In 2016, he wrote Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Finn's Story. This book is about the character Finn from the Star Wars movies.
In 2017, he wrote Black Panther: Who Is The Black Panther?. This was the first novel about Marvel Comics' first Black superhero, the Black Panther. The book was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in 2019.
In 2021, a book called Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda was published. Jesse Holland edited this book. It contains 18 stories written by different authors.
Awards and Recognitions
- 1996: Associated Press Managing Editor Association John L. Dougherty Excellence Award
- 1997: Presstime Magazine's Top 20 Under 40
- 2016: University of Arkansas Visiting Distinguished Professor of Ethics in Journalism
- 2016: Smithsonian.com Top History Books – The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slavery Inside the White House
- 2017: Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Medal for U.S. History – The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slavery Inside the White House
- 2019: NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction – Black Panther: Who Is The Black Panther?
