Marquita Pool-Eckert

• Leandra Abbott
• Lenore Allen
• Ed Bradley
• Audreen Buffalo
• Earl Caldwell
• Marquita Pool-Eckert
• Joy Elliott
• Gerald Fraser
• Charlayne Hunter-Gault
• George Goodman
• Charles Hobson
• Jane Irving
• Claude Lewis
• Nancy Maynard
• Gil Scott
• Wallace Terry
• Melba Tolliver
• Mel Watkins
• Hollie West

Won 5 Emmys for her television work

Still in the early light of her career, Marquita Pool was faced with a difficult editorial decision. Someone had just come in to the ABC station where she helped produce the community show Like It Is. He had a taped interview with Angela Davis, who after going underground had been caught by police. She was being held in jail in downtown New York. This source offered Pool a chance to air the tape on the condition it ran in its entirety uncut.

It was New Years Eve, the show for the next day was already prepared. The skeleton crew was around. But Pool was the one in charge. She decided to air the tape. She had the crew work down to the wire transferring the audio to video tape and adding stock footage of Davis.

The newsroom was tense. The editors working that night weren�t the most skillful and people resisted her decision saying the show shouldn�t air the comments of a Communist. At one point Pool had to go downstairs to her office. When she returned minutes later, American flags plastered around the room greeted her. No one said anything. And Pool decided to ignore the statement and keep working.

"There was no time to turn back," she says. "We finished it and put it on air the next day. It was a significant show."

Pool-Echert thrived from the rush deadlines. In a business then dominated by white men, she had to work harder, faster and smarter to rise through the ranks. Today, she is the senior producer for the CBS Sunday Morning Show.

"The woman thing was big," she says. "Race was always a consideration. I know I never had the benefit of the doubt. I had to work hard to establish a reputation. I couldn't make a mistake. I couldn't be wrong."

Originally, Pool-Echert envisioned herself as a lawyer, following in the footsteps of her father, a Chicago attorney who steeped himself in city politics and community affairs. When in first grade she studied alongside her father who at the time was in law school.

She attended Boston University as the civil rights movement was afoot. She found ways to contribute to the cause. When she graduated she moved to New York in search of a job. She still planned to go to law school but in the interim got work as a researcher for Time/Life books. The experience made her realize she much preferred journalism.

"I didn't want to spend all that time in the library. I would rather be out talking to people and having more of an immediate effect." She earned her master's from Columbia University's School of Journalism in 1969, one of six blacks in her class.

In graduate school she found her calling in television. She broke into broadcast as a publicist for ABC soap operas. Not exactly what she wanted, but she was in the door. After casting about for a lead, she heard of a position for associate producer of Like It Is. Producer Charles Hobson hired her. The staff was small, but it allowed her to learn every aspect of making a show: booking guests, timing shows, budgeting. She was the sole woman producer on staff.

The show came out of a mandate to improve race relations in communities around the country. Once Stokely Carmichael was a guest on the show. He said some provocative things, after which the FBI came to the station asking for the show's financial records. They wanted to see how much they paid Carmichael to compare to his income tax.

Pool-Echert left the show for a job at WNET where she stayed for a little more than a year. From there she went to CBS first working on the CBS Morning News, then for the Evening News with Walter Cronkite. She's won five Emmys for her work including a series about the state of the black family.