Former Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lacy Banks is among this year’s inductees to the National Association of Black Journalists Chicago chapter’s hall of fame.
The organization also recognized WBEZ reporter Nicole Jeanine Johnson as the emerging journalist of the year.
Banks was the first full-time Black sportswriter for the Sun-Times and chronicled seven world championships involving Chicago teams. He was the longest-serving sports reporter for the Sun-Times, joining the paper in 1972 and working until his death in 2012 at age 68.
He covered the Bulls and the NBA for most of those years, spanning all of Michael Jordan’s career and the first few years of Derrick Rose’s career.
At the time of his death, Banks, who also was a Baptist preacher for almost 60 years, was hailed as a trailblazer in the sportswriting world, a community leader and a compassionate friend to other journalists and people in the Bulls organization.
Johnson joined WBEZ last month as a data and investigative reporting fellow.
She previously worked at the Investigative Project on Race and Equity, where she co-led a data-driven investigation analyzing 20 years of Illinois public college campus law enforcement traffic stops to identify racial disparities.
The other NABJ Chicago Hall of Fame inductees are longtime NBC5 reporter Art Norman; ABC7 reporter Hosea Sanders; and Dorothy Leavell, publisher of the Chicago Crusader and Gary Crusader newspapers.
Tonia Hill, a reporter at The TRiiBE, was named the organization’s journalist of the year. WGN News Radio reporter Sylvia Snowden was given the NABJ Chicago President’s Award, and Elijah James, a University of Missouri student and contributing author for the Chicago Defender, was named the NABJ Chicago’s first-ever student journalist of the year.
The NABJ Chicago awards ceremony is scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday at Bassline, 2239 S. Michigan Ave.