Leon Dash

Leon Dash (born , in New Bedford, Massachusetts) is a professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A former reporter for the Washington Post, he is the author of Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America, which grew out of the eight-part Washington Post series for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.

Biography Dash grew up in New York City and later attended Howard University. He spent 1969-1970 as a Peace Corps high school teacher in Kenya. He joined the Washington Post in 1965, working as a member of the special projects unit, as part of the investigative desk, and as the West Africa Bureau Chief.

Dash spent 10 weeks with rebel forces in Angola in 1973 and was named by the Overseas Press Club of America as the 1974 winner of the George Polk Memorial Award “for best reporting from abroad, in any medium, requiring exceptional courage and enterprise.”

Rosa Lee, which started as an eight-part series for the Washington Post in September 1994, is the story of one woman and her family's struggle to escape the urban underclass poverty in the projects of Washington, D.C., later became the basis for his award-winning book, Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America. The eight-part series won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism for the story, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. The book was later picked as one of the best 100 pieces in 20th-century American Journalism by New York University's journalism department.

While living in the inner city of Washington, D.C., for a year, Dash researched teenage pregnancy in black youths for his book, When Children Want Children: The Urban Crisis of Teenage Childbearing. The book features conversations with teens and contains stories that contradict the common belief that inadequate birth control and lack of sex education classes are the causes of teenage pregnancy.

He received an Emmy Award in 1996 from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for a documentary series in the public affairs category of complex issues.

In 1998, Dash joined the University of Illinois as a professor of Journalism. In 2000, he was named the Swanlund Chair (the highest endowed title bestowed upon faculty at the University of Illinois) Professor of Journalism, Law, and Afro-American Studies. Three years later, he was made a permanent faculty member in the University's Center for Advanced Study. He was Director of the Center from 2009 to 2014.

On August 9, 2019, Dash was inducted into the NABJ's Hall of Fame for the second time with his colleagues, the six other members of The Washington Post's Metro Seven. The Metro Seven comprised seven Washington Post black reporters who filed a discrimination complaint against The Post with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) on March 23, 1972, the first action against a major metropolitan American newspaper.

On May 14, 2025, Leon was recognized by his colleagues, friends, and family for his career achievements by receiving a well-deserved retirement party.