Home / Full timeline / Max Robinson, the first Black news anchorman on American network television, dies of complications relating to AIDS in Washington, D.C., at age forty-nine.
Max Robinson, the first Black news anchorman on American network television, dies of complications relating to AIDS in Washington, D.C., at age forty-nine.
1988 (Dec 20)
Max Robinson, the first Black news anchorman on American network television, died of complications relating to AIDS in Washington, D.C., at age forty-nine. Robinson, who had worked as a news anchor at WTPO-TV in Washington, became a co-anchor with Peter Jennings and Frank Reynolds on the ABC-TV Network's “Evening News” in 1978. Carl Bernstein, chief of the ABC News bureau in Chicago, said Robinson was "deliberately excluded from any decision-making related to the newscast." In a speech at Smith College in February 1981, Robinson accused ABC of racism. Two years later, after the death of Reynolds, Jennings was named sole anchor of the "Evening News" and Robinson was "relegated to weekend anchor stints and news briefs." The next year he left ABC and joined WMAQ-TV in Chicago, Illinois. In June 1985, Robinson entered a hospital suffering from "emotional and physical exhaustion." He never returned to full-time news reporting. In commenting on Robinson's death, Roone Arledge, president of ABC News, said, "he made an important contribution to ABC News for which we will always be grateful."
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.