Kenneth Walker Dies at 73; His Journalism Bared Apartheid's Brutality

New York Times

08-05-2025

Kenneth Walker, an Emmy Award-winning journalist whose reporting for the ABC News program 'Nightline' helped bring the brutality of South Africa's racist apartheid system to the attention of the American public, propelling it onto the agenda of U.S. policymakers, died on April 11 in Washington. He was 73.
His cousin and executor, Jeff Brown, said his death, in a hospital, was caused by a heart attack, It was not widely reported at the time.
Mr. Walker's weeklong coverage of South Africa's often brutal policy of racial segregation — produced for 'Nightline' with Ted Koppel, the program's anchor, and a team of reporters — won a 1985 Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for outstanding analysis of a news story. It was also awarded an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Gold Baton.
'In the way that only television can, 'Nightline' revealed for viewers the pain, anguish and rage that suffuses the struggles of this divided country,' the duPont-Columbia citation said. 'Masterfully executed and exquisitely produced, it was perhaps the most powerful, certainly the most extraordinary, television of the year.'
The National Association of Black Journalists named Mr. Walker journalist of the year in 1985 for that reporting. The association had already given him an award for his work in print journalism — for his four-part series on apartheid for The Washington Star — and when he won the association's top award for radio journalism in 2001, he became the first person to receive its highest honors for print, television and radio.
The association later honored him further, with its Frederick Douglass Lifetime Achievement Award.
During his four-decade career, Mr. Walker was a reporter for The Washington Star (from 1969 to 1981, when it folded), for 'Nightline' (from 1981 to 1988) and for NPR, where he served as Africa bureau chief from 1999 to 2002.
Mr. Koppel recalled in an interview that Mr. Walker 'was one of a number of African American staffers at 'Nightline' who were gently, and not so gently, pushing for more attention being paid to Nelson Mandela when he was still in jail and was anything but a hero to millions of people, including the president of the United States' (Ronald Reagan at the time).
Mr. Walker helped persuade ABC executives to spend about $1 million to send the 'Nightline' production crew to South Africa for several weeks, Mr. Koppel said: 'His legacy is that he was instrumental in helping to convince us that is something we ought to do. The program changed minds in the United States and South Africa, and won more awards than just about any program we've ever done.'
But Mr. Walker didn't limit his criticism to other countries. He was also outspoken about racism in America and the special responsibility of Black journalists.
In 2021, at the annual round table held by Richard Prince, the former Washington Post reporter and editor who writes the online column Journal-isms, Mr. Walker described the United States as an 'active crime scene' that warranted a United Nations investigation into crimes against humanity because of numerous racist incidents that 'the media, including most Black journalists, are ignoring.'
He favored reparations for slavery, and he criticized the negative portrayal of Black people on television and in popular music.
He also lamented the scarcity of Black reporters; he wrote in a 2022 Facebook post that racist hiring practices had 'made it impossible for the media to keep the public informed.'
Kenneth Reginald Walker was born on Aug. 17, 1951, in Washington. His father, William, was a cabdriver; his mother, Lillie, was a government clerk.
After graduating from Archbishop Carroll High School in 1969, he worked at The Washington Star as a copy boy while attending the Catholic University of America on a scholarship. He left school before graduating to support his growing family and became a reporter at The Star.
Mr. Walker is survived by two stepsisters, Tabia Berry and Vikki Walker Parson, and three grandchildren. His marriages to Jacquelyn DeMesme and Ra'eesah Moon ended in divorce. A daughter from his first marriage, Maisha Hunter, died in 2017.
As a reporter for The Star, Mr. Walker covered the White House and the Supreme Court, and also served as a national and foreign correspondent.
While he was still at The Star, he began to work in TV, as the host of a weekend public affairs show on the ABC affiliate in Baltimore, focusing on issues of particular interest to Black viewers. After The Star folded in 1981, he was hired at ABC as general assignment reporter. He went on to cover the White House and the Justice Department for the network.
When '60 Minutes' broadcast a segment on apartheid in December 1984, Mr. Walker prodded ABC to also cover racial segregation in South Africa. (The 'Nightline' team that eventually won an Emmy for that coverage included the executive producer, Richard Kaplan; three senior producers, William Moore, Robert Jordan and Betsy West; and two reporters, Mr. Walker and Jeff Greenfield.)
'Blacks in the U.S. wrote and called ABC and the other networks en masse, something that doesn't happen very often,' Mr. Walker was quoted as saying in 'Black Journalists: The NABJ Story' (1997), by Wayne Dawkins. 'Also, Black South African resistance had escalated to the point where it could no longer be ignored.'
Mr. Walker later briefly anchored 'USA Today: The Television Series'; produced 'The Jesse Jackson Show,' a syndicated talk show that aired in 1990 and 1991; and founded Lion House Publishing, whose books included 'Black American Witness: Reports From the Front' (1994) by Earl Caldwell, a former reporter for The New York Times.
After leaving NPR, Mr. Walker remained in South Africa, where he served as communications director for the humanitarian organization CARE.
He returned to Washington in 2015, in need of a kidney transplant. A high school classmate, Charlie Ball, with whom he connected through an alumni group, proved a match and donated a kidney.
'Charlie's gift has also been as much a gift of spirit as one of life,' Mr. Walker said in 2019. 'As a member of the last generation of the civil rights movement, I have spent my life on the front lines of America's continuing struggle with its formerly enslaved citizens. Sometimes it seems as if that struggle is being won. Sometimes not. In my lifetime, it has never seemed more out of reach than it is today, when white supremacist terrorism is growing steadily.'