Carol Nunnelley

Carol Nunnelley

Carol Nunnelley is an Alabama journalist who worked for newspapers in Montgomery, Mobile and Birmingham from the 1960s through 2000 and was the first woman managing editor of The Birmingham News.  From 2001-2009, she was projects director for Associated Press Managing Editors and led nation-wide programs to address news credibility and training for journalists. She is the author of Building Trust in the News, a guidebook for editors; Janie Shores: Trailblazing Supreme Court Justice, a biography for young readers; and is currently collaborating on a collection of columns by H. Brandt Ayers, a crusading editor and publisher in Anniston, Alabama.

I became a stereotype

In 1963, I was a student and would-be journalist at Howard College (now Samford University), one of Birmingham’s whites-only institutions intent on ignoring and resisting the civil rights revolution outside their gates.  All that effort to shield us, and restrict us, and yet my memories of college years nonetheless are memories of Birmingham and civil rights.

I arrived at Howard with only a rudimentary sense of racial fairness.