Max Robinson

Max Robinson was born in Richmond, VA on May 1, 1939 to Maxie and Doris Robinson. His siblings are sisters Jewell and Jean, and brother Randall. In 1959, at the age of 20, Max Robinson beat out four white applicants for a position at a local TV station in Portsmouth, VA where he read the news on the air. There was just one catch: his face had to be hidden behind a slide bearing the station's logo. "One night," Clarence Page wrote in Chicago, "[Robinson] ordered the slide removed so his relatives could see him. He was fired the next day. When he moved to Washington, he was the first African-American anchor on a local television news program on WTOP-TV Channel 9 in 1969, and the first African-American anchor on a network television news program. During his three and a half years at WRC he won six journalism awards for his coverage of such events as the 1968 riots after civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, the antiwar demonstrations, and the national election. It