Remembering trailblazing Boston journalist Sarah-Ann Shaw
The last time I saw SarahAnn Shaw was in 2018 at a Boston College conference titled “Black Bostonians & The Media.” It didn’t matter that nearly two decades had passed since she’d retired from her legendary career as a journalist in which she made history when she was hired by WBZ in 1969 and became the first Black woman television news reporter in Boston. Time did not erode her concerns for an industry that she both championed and challenged in its coverage of Boston’s Black community, where she lived all of her 90 years.
When Sarah-Ann died on March 21, it cut down to the marrow of Black journalists in Boston, including me, and even those who had long ago left both Boston and the media. Many of us thought of ourselves as the progeny of this exceptional woman and the grace, talent, and tenacity that allowed her to blaze a trail that we still walk today. To contradict the old expression, SarahAnn did not crawl so we could walk.
She spoke the truth and always held her head high. She expected the same from us.
(I can’t bring myself to refer to Sarah-Ann as “Shaw.” Given my respect for her, for years I called her Ms. Shaw, and she corrected me every time. Everyone I knew called her Sarah-Ann, and I will do that here. Among us, she needed no last name.)
In a statement, Justin Draper, WBZ’s president and general manager, said Sarah-Ann’s “pioneering spirit, dedication to journalism, and commitment to amplifying marginalized voices have left an indelible mark on our industry and community.” He added that her “fearless pursuit of truth and unwavering advocacy for social justice set a standard for excellence that will continue to inspire generations to come.”
What that statement can’t capture is what Sarah-Ann endured in being the Black woman who found her way through a door and into rooms that were never built for her.
There was no ready path for her, but she created one so that others could someday follow. For every person rooting for her success, there were probably just as many — if not more — people who wished for her failure to prove that she had no business entering those rooms in the first place.
To be first is to be robbed of the luxury of learning curves and mistakes. Sarah-Ann had to be twice as good as her white colleagues to be considered half as worthy. She lived both in her moment and also as a harbinger of a future where her success could mean the presence of other Black women in newsrooms would no longer be a source of excessive attention or backlash. (Sadly, we’re not there yet.)
For Sarah-Ann, that job would always be covering in their fullness communities of color that had long been ignored or reduced to crime statistics. Like other Black journalists seeking jobs in print and broadcast at the time, Sarah-Ann was hired by WBZ when the nation’s racial unrest was seething — and that was before the Boston busing era. Black communities demanded stories from reporters who not only looked like them but who often understood the source and histories of discontent in these neighborhoods better than white journalists did.
Years later, some of us would bristle at being the “Black reporter” and see it as too limiting. But Sarah-Ann — who could cover anything — showed that there was a mission in journalism to tell every neighborhood’s stories with rigor, nuance, and depth. This was especially vital in marginalized groups that had long been victimized by media outlets that often served as mouthpieces for white supremacy.
Many of us thought of ourselves as the progeny of this exceptional woman and the grace, talent, and tenacity that allowed her to blaze a trail that we still walk today.
In an interview after she retired from WBZ in 2000, Sarah-Ann said, “I’ve tried to explain various ethnic and racial communities to people who don’t live in those communities. I’ve tried to be a bridge.”
Many of us looked to Sarah-Ann to remember that we should continue to expand that bridge to those communities and be a voice for those the powerful often refuse to hear. Of course, Sarah-Ann would have been at that Boston College conference — she embodied every word in its title.
I was a panelist at that conference. And as soon as I walked from the stage, Sarah-Ann was one of the first people to greet me, her arms opened wide. She remained the doyenne of Boston’s
Black journalists, but there was nothing haughty about her. She always took time to ask how you were doing, to compliment something you’d recently done, and to share wisdom hardearned in ways I couldn’t begin to imagine.
Like so many others in Boston and elsewhere, I will miss Sarah-Ann beyond words. But I will always carry, and share in her name, the lessons she taught me both as an extraordinary journalist and an even more extraordinary woman.