African American columnists to discuss 2006 elections

A group of leading black newspaper columnists on Monday will discuss the impact of the 2006 elections on African Americans.

The forum, "What Next? African Americans, the 2006 Vote and the Race Ahead," is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 13 in Cubberley Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

The columnists discussing the elections are Betty Bayé of the Louisville Courier-Journal; Lewis Diuguid of the Kansas City Star; Askia Muhammad, who writes for Final Call (the newspaper of the Nation of Islam) and the Washington Informer; Les Payne of Newsday; and Rochelle Riley of the Detroit Free Press. Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe will be the moderator. All are members of the Trotter Group, a national organization of African American newspaper columnists.

The forum will be the only public session during the Trotter Group's three-day annual meeting. The columnists will meet privately with some Stanford faculty members, as well as John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellows. The Knight Fellowships Program is sponsoring the meeting.

The group is named for William Monroe Trotter, an influential black journalist of the early 20th century.

The first meeting of the Trotter Group was held in 1992 at Harvard University. The group has met twice before at Stanford, in 1994 and 1998.

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