With the amazing opportunities as a new reporter, you almost never know who you’re going to interview next.
The along came the chance to meet with civil rights pioneers Claudette Colvin and Fred Gray. I’d heard of both their stories before, but never knew their names or their connection.

Before Rosa Parks, there was 15-year-old Colvin, who refused to give her seat on a segregated bus in March 1955 (Rosa did the same in Dec. 1955). Colvin was arrested for civil disobedience and her attorney was Fred Gray. They eventually won their case, and Gray went on to represent Dr. Martin Luther King and took on several groundbreaking cases. Gray is featured in the Oscar-nominated film “Selma,” and is portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr.
There really is not enough room to write all their accolades. But I tried to capture in a one minute and 30 seconds, the essence of their historical impact as the two made a stop in Oklahoma to speak at Oklahoma Christian University in honor of Black History Month.

Moving to the state of Oklahoma to report the news, I got a rude awakening of just how life-changing the weather can be. Growing up in Georgia, I’ve experienced tornadoes before but certainly nothing like the historic ones that hit the state of Oklahoma in May 2013. For a while it was like they didn’t stop. I covered my first one on May 19th in Carney, Oklahoma, which was devastated small town, where I interviewed a woman who pulled from rubble. I was in the city of Shawnee the next day for coverage of the same tornado that destroyed homes there. And while back at my news station, the big one struck. It was late afternoon on May 20th. Our meteorologists kept talking of more twisters to come, but the day was sunny and hadn’t the state suffered enough already?
Well apparently not, since the sky turned black out of no where, and it began to rain and hail and sirens went off. Then it happened, we’re watching storm chasers on live broadcast track the tornado that wiped out two elementary schools in Moore killing 7 children.

I had never seen anything like it. I heard Moore was “Tornado Alley” since it experienced several tornados in the last two decades, but like lighting, you rarely think it’ll strike the same place twice. Then the widest tornado recorded hit El Reno, Oklahoma on May 31st. And this one destroyed a vocational school, farms and even killed a National Geographic storm chaser. I was covering this storm for weeks, since sadly that’s how long it took for rescuers to find bodies of a couple families that took refuge in sewer drains in Oklahoma City. The waters got so high, did a flash flood, and these two families with very little children were washed away. Many of the families still survived, but babies died.
Again, nothing like I had ever seen before or imagined.