"Evelyn Thompson - KOOL-TV News Reporter and Sportscaster"

[Women]: [African Americana]: [News Industry]: Thompson, Evelyn:

[Photographic Scrapbook Documenting the Early Journalism Career of Evelyn Thompson, Noted Reporter and News Anchor in Arizona].

[Various locations, mostly Phoenix, AZ: 1972-1980]. [24] leaves, illustrated with twenty-three mounted photographs, plus dozens of mounted ephemeral items including letters, documents, certificates, newspaper clippings, and more, plus a folder laid in containing television prompt copies. Folio. Contemporary brown vinyl scrapbook, string tied. Minor overall wear, some old tape stains to most items, some items apparently re-mounted, likely by a later friend or family member. Overall very good. Item #12998

A wonderful scrapbook celebrating the professional career of Evelyn Lorraine Thompson (1948-2005), on-air reporter and news anchor for KOOL-CBS Radio and Television and KTVK-TV in Phoenix, Arizona in the 1970s. Thompson worked for KOOL straight out of college, after graduating from Boston University in 1972. She was hired as a writer-producer for morning newscasts, then worked as a full-time news reporter. Unusual for the era, Thompson also served as KOOL's weekend sports reporter. She later moved to KTVK-TV, also in Phoenix, where she worked as a news anchor. We could find no other information about Thompson following about 1980, except for her brief obituary in the Arizona Republic.

The present scrapbook provides a valuable snapshot of Thompson's life and early career through a range of original photographs showing her as a child but with the majority showing her during her working years at KOOL and KTVK. The album also includes numerous letters to Thompson from a variety of correspondents, thanking her for stories, congratulating her for her positions at the news, news releases and other documents announcing her personal appearances, newspaper clippings when Thompson appeared in the paper either for a story or as the subject of a story, and so forth. The scrapbook even includes the prompt copy of a speech given by her before sorority students at Northern Arizona University. For a deeper look at her life as a reporter or anchor, a number of additional prompt copies of some of Thompson's stories are gathered in a manila envelope laid into the scrapbook. The scrapbook also includes award certificates, most notably her award as one of the "Outstanding Young Women of America" in 1973. Altogether a unique assemblage of original materials documenting a trailblazing Black reporter and news anchor in the contemporary American West.

Price: $1,250