PBMF Mourns the Loss of Jean Bryant

Ms. Bryant circa 1990.

(Dec. 13, 2023) -- Fifty-one years ago, Jean Bryant left her home state of New Jersey and settled into Pittsburgh, where she began a position as a reporter with the Pittsburgh Press newspaper.

She made history, becoming one of the first Black female journalists to work with a mainstream

newspaper in the city. 

Bryant was energetic, meticulous, unflappable, and stylish. She often wore her fashionable furs to the office. But she was also an award-winning journalist who focused on news and profile writing, using her stories to inspire, inform and teach on lives that were often left uncovered. A dedicated community advocate who championed Black youth and African American advancement, Bryant died on Wednesday, Dec. 13, at the North Hills Skilled Nursing and Rehab Center. She was 91. 

As she followed her interest in social activism and community engagement, she became an early member of the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation, founded in 1973. She also created the Miss Black Teenage Pittsburgh and Mr. African American self-development programs for young people. With each, she created a legacy of mentoring and giving back that touched hundreds of lives. In addition, she served a stint as president of the Stanton Heights Community Organization and was an auxiliary board member of New Horizon Theater, Inc., which supports African

American playwrights and storytelling.

As a young wife and mother in Orange, N.J., Bryant landed a job as an account manager with the Black-owned Afro American newspaper there. Very quickly, because of her motivation, creativity, and talent, she was dispatched to cover community news and launched what became a 29-year career as a reporter.

At the Pittsburgh Press, her stories changed lives. One she wrote helped to free a man mistakenly accused of a bank robbery. Because of her experience with the Black press and reporting on the Black community, Bryant thought the Pittsburgh paper lacked positive, comprehensive coverage of African Americans, so she advocated for change. She did a three-part series on local Black businesses that drew wide attention and afforded her more storytelling opportunities at the Press.

When Bryant was assigned as a reporter to the Press' Page 2 -- a section of features and short notes that some considered a lesser role -- she saw it as a chance to excel. She produced human interest stories so compelling that they impressed the ownership Scripps-Howard, and they tried to model what she created throughout their entire chain of newspapers.

When the Press closed at the end of 1992 after a prolonged strike, Bryant continued to promote Black success as a feature writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She retired in 1999.

"Jean was a light of encouragement and grace in the newsroom," said Carmen Lee, a former reporter and suburban editor at the Post-Gazette and currently a senior communications officer at The Heinz Endowments. "She was an exceptional writer who evoked visual images with her words. But she also was a warm and caring person who made you feel welcomed whenever you were in her presence -- especially important traits when you are one of the few Black folks on the job. Jean was a role model in every sense of the term."

With the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation, she served as treasurer and also with the Federation's Frank L. Bolden Multimedia Workshop, where for years she stayed late at night working with young writers on their stories and encouraging them to succeed.

Keith L. Alexander participated in the workshop in the mid-1980s. He went on to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning crime and courts reporter with The Washington Post. He came to know Bryant when he was 16 and on his first job as a copy messenger at The Pittsburgh Press, where he was drawn to the "caramel Black woman with blond hair, booming laugh and sweet voice and demeanor." 

A couple of years later, Alexander joined the Post-Gazette as a copy clerk, and he would often stop by Bryant's desk in the features department for conversations.

"She always made time for me," Alexander said. "What a lovely, giving and teaching soul. She poured so much into me ... she made so much time to inspire and love on a teenage Black boy who was trying to find his way in journalism."

Deborah Todd, president of the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation and also a graduate of its journalism workshop, said that Bryant was "a pillar of Pittsburgh's Black community, a trailblazer of Black journalism and an invaluable mentor to generations of Black journalists, teenagers, and young professionals. Her legacy endures through the lives she touched and the lives they have touched in turn." 

Bryant ran the Miss Black Teenage Pageant for 30 years. It generated more than $500,000 in scholarships. Her values and lessons in "Confidence, Awareness and Pride," the program's motto, sent many on their way to becoming doctors, lawyers, teachers and more. Two of her former pageant participants include Lisa Ruffin, a working actress who started a Miss Black Teenage Pageant in Los Angeles, and "Law and Order" actress Tamara Tunie, who was a contestant in Bryant's first pageant in Pittsburgh.

Bryant's Mr. African American program ran for 10 years. In the 1990s, Brian A. Cook, Sr., now the communications and marketing director for Central Catholic, participated in the program.

"I personally benefited from her leadership and undying commitment to the growth of young Black youth," he said. "She was the remarkable creator of an establishment that nurtured empowerment and advancement. It instilled innumerable individuals with assurance, determination, and a sense of self-respect."

"I have always tried to do meaningful things," Bryant told the New Pittsburgh Courier in 2012, when she received the paper's Woman of Excellence award.  "If something isn't right, I'm out there trying to do something about it. But it's God that propels me in these directions," Bryant said.

A member of Macedonia Church in Pittsburgh's Hill District, Bryant was born July 1, 1932, in Roselle, N.J., along with her twin, Betty, and spent her formative years in the Garden State, raising her family in Orange, N.J. In 2022, she authored, "How Did I Get Here? The Force Within," a memoir of her childhood and career achievements. 

"Jean was a brilliant communicator, a wise mentor and a true friend who blessed my life in many ways, initially as a professional colleague," said LaMont Jones of Alexandria, Va., who met Bryant when he was a reporter intern at the Press in 1986 and later worked alongside her full time at the Press and Post-Gazette. 

"She taught me valuable organizational skills when she helped me establish the P-G's monthly Teen Forum page in 1993," said Jones, who is now managing editor for education at U.S. News & World Report. "She gave me my first public speaking platform in Pittsburgh when she asked me to emcee her Miss Black Teenage Pageant and later the Mr. African American Program. And she introduced me in 1992 to her home church, Macedonia, where my spiritual life grew over the years in ways I never imagined. I often referred to her as my Pittsburgh mother, and she treated

me like a son. The world is diminished by her absence, but her positive impact on many thousands of lives will live on."

Bryant's sons Crawford, Bernard, Stephen, and Charles Daniels predeceased her.

PBMF, founded in 1973, is an organization of professional communicators that provides educational, career development and support to journalists of color in Western Pennsylvania. It is affiliated with the National Association of Black Journalists.