Diane Primo
847-977-3134
dprimo@intralinkglobal.com
(BLACK PR WIRE) – (March 10, 2011) – Janet Langhart Cohen, a former host of Good Day! in Boston, and her husband, former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, will receive the Museum of African American History’s prestigious Living Legend Award on Friday, March 11, at a dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston. Past winners of the Living Legend Award include Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Honorable Edward Brooke and actor and social activist Ossie Davis.
The Cohens exemplify this criterion, individually and as a bi-racial couple. Together, they champion multiculturalism and work to further tolerance, acceptance and diversity in the United States. In 2008, they spearheaded Race and Reconciliation, a seminal conference held in Washington, D.C. that began a serious, open and highly visible civil dialogue on racial, ethnic and religious prejudice.
“While they have each had spectacular individual careers, as a couple they have been nothing less than champions of civil rights. Their actions on behalf of social justice, anti-Semitism and the families of those who serve in the military are nothing short of inspirational,” notes Beverly A. Morgan –Welch, executive director of the Museum.
Janet Langhart Cohen, president of Langhart Communications, LLC, is an Emmy-nominated journalist, playwright, author, Huffington Post blogger and humanitarian. She began her media career as a ‘weathergirl’ on Chicago’s CBS affiliate WBBM-TV in 1969, hosted Good Day! on the Boston ABC affiliate WCVB-TV from 1973-1978 and went on to appear on ABC, CBS, NBC and BET in a wide range of roles. She has been a national correspondent and news anchor; served as an overseas correspondent in Europe, Africa and the Middle East; and interviewed important newsmakers, including Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali, F. Lee Bailey, Margaret Thatcher, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Denzel Washington, Whoopi Goldberg and Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
Langhart Cohen is also an author, penning “From Rage to Reason: My Life in Two Americas” in 2004; “Love in Black and White: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Romance” with her husband in 2007; and most recently “Anne and Emmett,” a one-act play of an imaginary conversation between Nazi victim Anne Frank and Emmett Till, whose brutal murder by white racists energized the modern civil rights movement.
William S. Cohen, chairman and CEO of The Cohen Group, represented his home state of Maine as a Congressman from 1973-1979 and Senator from 1979-1997. President Clinton appointed him Secretary of Defense in 1996, marking the first time in modern history that a cabinet appointment crossed party lines. He left public service to found an eponymous consultancy in 2001 after accruing a record of remarkable and respected accomplishments and a reputation for integrity.
Also receiving the Living Legend Award that evening are Edmund F. Kelly, chairman and CEO, Liberty Mutual; Marita Rivero, vice president and general manager, WGBH; and Augustus A. White III, Ph.D., M.D., Harvard Medical School.