Gail Christian, who broke barriers as a black live correspondent and achieved national fame on NBC News and PBS, died on April 12 in Los Angeles. she was 83

According to her wife, Lucy DeBardelaben, the cause was complications from a recent bowel operation.

Ms. Christian overcame a troubled youth, including a prison sentence for armed robbery, and went on to a career as a well-known television reporter and news executive in the 1970s and 80s, an era when the industry was dominated by white males.

She became a prominent presence in American living rooms with her coating for NBC News about the trial of Patricia Hearst, a newspaper heiress who was kidnapped in 1974 by a gang of left-wing revolutionaries called the Symbionese Liberation Army and who was convicted two years later of participating in a bank robbery with the group.

But it wasn’t enough for Ms. Christian to just appear on the evening news as a rare black face.

“I always wanted to be a Black Reporter covering black stories,” she said in interview with the Chicago Tribune in 1986. “I felt that was why I was there. I didn’t get angry at all. I felt then, as I do now, that it is very dangerous for a group of people to live in a society where they are not allowed to interpret themselves.”

She has done this mission well with features such as “A Country Called Watts” an hour-long special for NBC News in 1977 that chronicled the efforts of the residents of this area of ​​Los Angeles to come together and re-evaluate the bloody civil unrest that occurred in response to police brutality in 1965 and rebuild burned-out neighborhoods in the face of perceived government indifference and ongoing police harassment.

“Gail continued to push for black faces and voices to appear on television news so that footage of black men in handcuffs was no longer the only images of blacks that white viewers could see.” – Gary Gilson, former faculty director of the undergraduate summer program from number of minorities at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, said in a telephone interview. “And her pioneering role as a black news reporter allowed young black children to see, for many for the first time, someone adorable on TV who looked like them. It gave them recognition and hope.”

After two years at NBC News, Ms. Christian became the news director of community station KCET in her native Los Angeles, where she created a 60 Minutes-style investigative series called 28 Tonight (the station was on channel 28). .

This program had several award-winning segments, including one about a banking scandal that hurt the underprivileged and another about a chemical spill in Orange County that caused disease in the area, each of which won a Peabody Award.

In 1981, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she began a nearly ten-year career as director of news for the Public Broadcasting Service.

“Ever since I’ve been in this business, I’ve always wanted to be one of the executives who go into this little room and decide what gets covered and by whom,” she said in a 1976 interview with The Los Angeles Times. “But on NBC, I have never seen women walk into that little room. No minorities. I thought this was my chance.”

“As Bobby Seal said,” she added, referring to one of the founders of the Black Panther Party, “seize the moment.”

Gale Christian was born Gail Patricia Wells on February 20, 1940 in Los Angeles, one of four children of Edwin Wells, who worked on the assembly line for the Hughes Aircraft Company, and Lucille (Scruggs) Wells, who owned a beauty college. in the Leimert Park neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles. (She later adopted Christian, her mother’s first name, as her professional surname.)

Ms. Christian grew up in Venice, California and spent three years studying world history at California State University, Los Angeles before dropping out to join the Air Force in 1962. in 1965, she was convicted of armed robbery after a hotel robbery.

A robbery that netted less than $100 landed her at the California Institute for Women in Chino for 18 months. . “I really didn’t have to do it. I had a loving family, unlike many other prisoners. At the time, I was just out of shape.”

After she served her time, a parole colleague who worked as a switchboard operator for The San Francisco Examiner informed her that the paper planned to hire two black reporters to diversify its staff. Having no experience, Miss Christian considered this possibility unlikely, but she talked herself into becoming an apprentice by embellishing the truth.

“I gave them this song and dance about working on this little black paper that the clan burned,” she told The Tribune.

In 1970, she took part in an 11-week summer program for minority students in radio journalism at Columbia University. (Geraldo Rivera was a classmate.) Two years later, she was hired by KNBC, the local NBC affiliate. She worked there for six years before being hired by NBC News.

Her tenure with PBS ended in 1989, shortly after the network became embroiled in controversy over the airing of a pro-Palestinian documentary called Days of Anger, which Ms. Christian purchased and was in charge of reviewing. News reports claimed that the film was supported in part by undisclosed Arab funding, which was denied by its producer.

In an interview with The New York Times, Ms Christian said she left PBS for other reasons. “You burn out because it’s a no-win situation,” she said. “You get silence when things are going well and outrage when questions come up.”

She eventually settled in Palm Springs, California with Ms. DeBardelaben, whom she married in 2016. In 2003, the couple launched the annual Palm Springs Women’s Jazz Festival.

In addition to Ms. DeBardelaben, Ms. Christian is survived by a grandson. Her daughter Sunday Barrett died in 2019.

While Ms. Christian kept quiet about her jail time early in her career, she finally decided to speak up to a sympathetic NBC executive. “The guy just looked at me,” she recalls. “He says, ‘I don’t have enough problems. Should I listen to yours? Get out of here.’ Never heard another word.”