Clarence Page


Clarence Page, the 1989 Pulitzer Prize winner for Commentary, has been a columnist and a member of the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board since July 1984. His column is syndicated nationally by Tribune Media Services. He has been based in Washington, D.C. since May 1991.

Page is also a regular contributor of essays to The News Hour With Jim Lehrer and a host of documentaries on the Public Broadcasting System. He is also a regular panelist on Black Entertainment Television’s weekly Lead Story news panel program.

Page was a reporter and assistant city editor for the Chicago Tribune from 1969 to 1980. He joined WBBM-TV in August 1980 as Director of the Community Affairs Department. He was a reporter and planning editor at the station from August 1982 to July 1984.

Page’s awards include a 1980 Illinois UPI awards for community service for an investigative series titled "The Black Tax" and the Edward Scott Beck Award for overseas reporting of a 1976 series on the changing politics of Southern Africa. Page also participated in a 1972 Chicago Tribune Task Force series on vote fraud which won the Pulitzer Prize. He was the recipient of the 1987 American Civil Liberties Union James P. McGuire Award for his columns educating readers on constitutional rights. He was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame in 1992.

As a freelance writer, he has published articles in Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Reader, Washington Monthly, New Republic, Wall Street Journal, New York Newsday and Emerge. His book Showing My Color: Impolite Essays on Race and Identity (Harper Collins) was published in 1996.

A 1965 graduate of Middletown High School, Middletown, Ohio, Page began his journalism career as a freelance writer and photographer for the Middletown Journal and Cincinnati Enquirer at the age of 17. He received his bachelor of science in journalism from Ohio University in 1969, and delivered the commencement speech to the class of 1993. He has received honorary doctorates from Ohio University, Columbia College in Chicago and Lake Forest College, among others.

Page was born in Dayton, Ohio, on June 2, 1947. He has been married since May 3, 1987, to the former Lisa Johnson of Chicago. They have one child.