Quick Facts
Biography
Hallie Almena Lomax (née Davis) (July 23, 1915 – March 25, 2011) was an African American journalist and civil rights activist.
Biography
Early life
Born in Galveston, Texas, Lomax moved as a young child with her family to Chicago and later California, where she studied journalism at Los Angeles City College.
Career
In 1941, she started the Los Angeles Tribune, a weekly newspaper targeted at the African-American community, which she ran with her former husband, Lucius W. Lomax, Jr. (1910–73). During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, she left California, with her children, to join the struggle in the South. Later she returned to California, where she worked at the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner. As a reporter, she covered such topics as the kidnapping of Patty Hearst.
She can be seen as a contestant on the 3rd March 1955 edition of You Bet Your Life alongside Joe Louis.
Personal life
Lomax, a divorcee, had six children, four of whom survived her. One of her surviving children is Michael L. Lomax, former chairman of the Fulton County (Ga.) Commission, former president of Dillard University, one of the historically black colleges, in New Orleans, La., and current president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund. Lomax was predeceased by two daughters, Michele L. Lomax, a San Francisco film critic and journalist, who died in 1987, and Los Angeles civil rights lawyer Melanie E. Lomax, who died in 2006. She appeared on "You bet your life" with Groucho Marx, alongside Joe Louis.