Carol Jenkins – Serial Adjustments | S1 E07

“The women in my family kept working, never saw any kind of deadline –‘Oh well, now I’ll retire and not do anything.’ I think that’s what I’ll do as well, and hope I’ll get a few more things done before it’s over.”

Carol Jenkins, 72, award-winning news broadcast journalist, author, and “always an agitator” has “retired” many times only to find herself moving on to the next new thing. After 25 years at NBC as a news anchor and correspondent, she hosted a talk show, Carol Jenkins Live on WNYW, and then went on to become a farmer –yes, that’s right a farmer.

When Gloria Steinem, a close friend, called one day and casually asked her what she was doing, Carol answered, “Right now? I’m herding turkeys.” She was also caring for her aging mother and writing a book with her daughter Elizabeth Gardner Hines: Black Titan, about her millionaire and civil rights activist uncle, A.J. Gaston. Life after the farm? Carol was Founding President of The Women’s Media Center for years and then retired, to help rear her grandchildren and begin writing another book on her family’s long experience in journalism as a window on gender and racial bias in media.

Last year she came out of retirement –again--  to return to New York television as host of Black America, a new TV series on CUNY-TV about what it means to be Black in America today. Hope you’ll listen to our joyful conversation with this deservedly well-known storyteller and unflagging social justice activist.