Pioneering journalist Gwen Ifill has died. She started her career under infelicitous circumstances at the Boston Herald, but went on to a highly successful career, eventually becoming co-anchor of the PBS NewsHour. Read more about how she broke television barriers in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education:

Recently, when a reporter asked Ifill if her success had transcended race, she replied, “You don’t transcend being black. There ain’t no such thing. You broaden someone’s stereotype of what it means to be black. There are people who get nervous when you bring up the subject of race because we’re schooled in this country to think it’s a negative. I always think of it as a plus.”