Cunningham, Evelyn

US writer and reporter, best known as the ‘Lynching Editor’ of the Pittsburgh Courier in the 1940s and 1950s, when it was the most influential newspaper in black America. She earned her name for stories on the fight for equal rights in the early 1960s, reporting on a variety of rights issues, including the school desegregation fight in Birmingham, Alabama, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the murders of black sharecroppers who exercised their right to vote. In 1975, she served on President Richard Nixon's Committee on the Rights and Responsibilities of Women, helping to write the groundbreaking report ‘A Matter of Simple Justice’. A founder of The Coalition of 100 Black Women, Cunningham helped forge coalitions of women of all ethnic and racial backgrounds.

As a special assistant to Governor Rockefeller and director of the Women's Unit, she organized a state woman's political conference and cooperated with NOW (National Organization of Women) and other women's organizations to create a receptive climate for feminism. In the 1990s she was actively involved with several organizations, including the Citizen's Committee of New York, Resources for Midlife and Older Women, and Richard Allen's Center of Culture and Arts.