Rosella More named Person of the Year

Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Rosella More has been named the 2007 Person of the Year by the local Black History Committee.

Rosella (Diamond) More will be honored Friday as the Person of the Year by the Mountain Home Black History Committee, one of the highlights of the annual semi-formal Black History Banquet.

The annual banquet celebrating Black History Month will be held Friday, Feb. 16, at the Hampton Inn and Suites, 3175 Foothills Road, in Mountain Home.

Tickets are $30 per person.

For more information and tickets call 587-3227.

The banquet also features the awarding of the Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King, Jr. awards for service to the committee and the community, and announcement of the winners of the committee's poster and essay contests.

George E. Curry, editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service and BlackPressUSA.com, will be the featured speaker.

More was born in Greenville, S.C. She met and married her husband, the late James More, in Greenville in 1954. They were married for 45 years. They came to Mountain Home in 1970 with the USAF. They have two children, Fred More and Priscilla McCutchen, and two grandchildren, Tiffany and Tara Moore.

Rosella served as treasurer of the Black History committee for 15 years, resigning from that position in 2006. She has been honored previoously by the committee as a recipient of the Martin Luther King award for outstanding service to the committee.

"She enjoys working with numbers," the committee said in announcing her selection as its Person of the Year. "Her attention to detail, and reliability, is most impressive. The committee could always rely on Rose to keep us on our toes."

More is a member and a past Worthy Matron and past queen of the Alfred E. David Chapter #8, Order of the Eastern Star, State of Oregon, Idaho, and Montana (PHA). She currently is serving as the organization's treasurer.

She is an active member of the First Bible Church here in Mountain Home. Her favorite Bible Scripture is Psalm 23. She loves fishing, walking, reading, and helping others.

On the Thursday preceding the banquet, Feb. 15, Curry, who was editor-in-chief of "Emerge: Black America's Newsmagazine," from 1993 until June 2000, will be at the Mountain Home Public Library for a book signing from 6--8 p.m. A limited number of free books, which compile the best works of Emerge, will be available.

Under Curry's leadership, Emerge won more than 40 national journalism awards.

Curry's work at the National Newspaper Publishers Association has ranged from being inside the Supreme Court to hearing oral arguments in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases, to traveling to Doha, Qatar, to report on America's war with Iraq. While in the Persian Gulf, Curry obtained the first exclusive interview with Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks after the fall of Baghdad.

His weekly column is syndicated by NNPA to more than 200 African-American newspapers, with a combined readership of 15 million.

He is past president of the American Society of Magazine Editors, the first African-American and non-New York based editor to hold the association's top office.

Before taking over as editor of Emerge, Curry served as New York bureau chief and as a Washington correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. Prior to joining the Tribune in 1983, Curry worked for 11 years as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and for two years as a reporter for Sports Illustrated.

As a reporter for the Tribune, Curry covered the 1984 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson and the vice presidential campaigns of Geraldine Ferraro and the senior George Bush. He accompanied Jackson to Rome in 1985 for an audience with Pope John Paul II. In 1992, Curry covered the presidential campaign of Bill Clinton and the vice presidential campaign of Senator Al Gore.

He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who Among Black Americans, and Outstanding Young Men of America. He is the author of "Jake Gaither: America's Most Famous Black Coach," editor of The Affirmative Action Debate, editor of The Best of Emerge (the book he will sign Thursday) and editor of an anthology tentatively titled, "Fit to Print? Jayson Blair, the New York Times and Twenty-First Century Journalism," to be published in late summer or early fall. Curry also contributed to Walter Mosley's anthology, "Black Genius: African American Solutions To African American Problems."

Born in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Curry graduated from Druid High School of that city and attended Knoxville College in Tennessee, Harvard and Yale. At Knoxville, Curry was editor of the school paper, quarterback and co-captain of the football team and a member of the school's Board of Trustees. In 1986, he wrote and served as chief correspondent for the widely praised television documentary, "Assault on Affirmative Action," which was aired as part of the "Frontline" series on PBS. He was featured in a segment of "One Plus One," a national PBS documentary on mentoring that was first televised in 1989.

In 1996, Curry was part of the weeklong Nightline special, "America in Black and White." He has also appeared on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, The Today Show, 20/20, Good Morning America, CNN, C-SPAN, BET, Fox Network News and MSNBC. The National Association of Black Journalists named Curry its 2003 "Journalist of the Year." He is on the NABJ's list of Most Influential Black Journalists of the 20th Century.

After delivering the 1999 commencement address at Kentucky State University, he was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters degree. In May 2000, Lane College in Jackson, Tenn. also presented Curry with an honorary doctorate after his commencement speech. Later that year, the University of Missouri presented Curry with its Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, the highest honor the School of Journalism bestows.

Curry became the founding director of the St. Louis Minority Journalism Workshop in 1977. Seven years later, he became founding director of the Washington Association of Black Journalists' annual high school journalism workshop. In February 1990, Curry organized a similar workshop in New York City.

Curry's work with aspiring journalists has not been limited to the United States. He has conducted journalism workshops for teens in Germany and in 1995 he directed a program that brought together college students in the U.S. and those studying journalism in Senegal to produce two newspapers for the African/African-American Summit in Dakar, Senegal.

He is a trustee of Knoxville College, the Kemba N. Smith Foundation, St. Paul Saturdays, a leadership training program for young African-American males in St. Louis, and Young D.C., a regional teen-produced newspaper.

Curry was also a trustee of the National Press Foundation, chairing a committee that funded more than 15 workshops patterned after the one he directed in St. Louis.

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