Simeon Booker to discuss his new history of the civil rights movement , 6:30 April 9

Simeon Booker, the first fulltime African-American reporter for The Washington Post and White House correspondent for Jet magazine for more than a half-century, will discuss his new book, “Shocking the Conscience: A Reporter’s Account of the Civil Rights Movement,” at a National Press Club Book Event at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. April 9.

Booker will be joined by SiriusXM Radio host Joe Madison (the "Black Eagle"). The event will run until 8 p.m. in the Ballroom.

Registration is required by clicking here. Tickets are free for Club members and $5 for the general public. This event is a fundraiser for the National Press Club Journalism Institute.

Within a few years of its first issue in 1951, Jet, a pocket-size magazine, became the "bible" for news of the civil rights movement. It was said, only half-jokingly, "If it wasn't in Jet, it didn't happen." Writing for the magazine and its glossy, big sister Ebony, for 53 years, Booker, the Washington bureau chief, was on the front lines of virtually every major event of the revolution that transformed America.

Rather than tracking the freedom struggle from the usually cited ignition points, “Shocking the Conscience” begins with an account of the massive voting-rights rally in the Mississippi Delta town of Mound Bayou in 1955. It was the first rally after the Supreme Court's Brown decision struck fear in the hearts of segregationists across the former Confederacy. It was also Booker's first assignment in the Deep South, and before the next run of the weekly magazine, the killings would begin.

Booker vowed that lynchings would no longer be ignored beyond the black press. Jet was reaching into households across America, and he was determined to cover the next murder like none before. He had only a few weeks to wait. A small item on the AP wire reported that a Chicago boy vacationing in Mississippi was missing. Booker was on the story through one of the most infamous murder trials in U.S. history. His coverage of Emmett Till's death lit a fire that would galvanize the movement.

This is the story of the century that changed everything about journalism, politics, and more in America, as only Booker, the dean of the black press, could tell it.