Almena Lomax

Hallie Almena Lomax (née Davis) (July 23, 1915 – March 25, 2011) was an African American journalist and civil rights activist.

Early life Lomax was born in Galveston, Texas. Her parents, Clifford and Geneva Davis, moved the family to Chicago when Almena was a child, and that is where she and her sister were raised. Her family subsequently moved to Los Angeles, where she graduated from Jordan High School in the Watts neighborhood of South Los Angeles.

Career In 1941, Lomax started the Los Angeles Tribune, a weekly newspaper targeted at the African-American community, which she ran with her former husband, Lucius W. Lomax, Jr. (1910–73). He was the publisher and she was the editor. She also wrote a weekly opinion column. In 1946, she was one of three winners of the Wendell Willkie Award, established to honor the best black journalists in the United States. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, she left California, with her children, to join the struggle in the South. Later she returned to California, where she worked at the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner. As a reporter, she covered such topics as the kidnapping of Patty Hearst.

Lomax was a contestant on the 3rd March 1955 edition of You Bet Your Life, hosted by Groucho Marx, alongside Joe Louis.

Personal life Lomax, a divorcee, had six children, four of whom survived her.