Spotlight
Melba Tolliver: New York TV News Legend was an Accidental Anchorwoman

Fern Gillespie
Like the title of her memoir, Accidental Anchorwoman: A Memoir of Chance, Choice, Change and Connection, journalist Melba Tolliver is truly an accidental television news anchorwoman. In 1967, one year after the Civil Rights Act, in an era when Black people were a rarity on television, she made history. Tolliver, a registered nurse turned ABC News secretary, became the first Black person to anchor a network news program. During a news strike, ABC executives asked Tolliver to leave her secretary desk and sit-in for Marlene Sanders, anchor of the five-minute afternoon show “News With The Woman’s Touch.”
Saying “yes,” Tolliver took a chance, made a choice, created a racial change in national television and connected with millions of viewers. “I came in, it was accidental. I wasn’t aiming to be a news reporter or an anchor. But I became an anchorwoman. I started at the very top,” Tolliver told Our Time Press. “Then I went back to being a secretary and then a news trainee.” As a trainee, she took journalism classes at Columbia University and NYU, later earning a journalism degree at SUNY Empire State College.
In Accidental Anchorwoman, Tolliver, age 85, reflects on her personal life and high-profile career as a television news reporter and anchor spanning the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s that made her a local New York City news legend. On WABC-TV, where she was on the original Eyewitness News team, she wore her hair in an afro when covering Tricia Nixon’s 1971 wedding at the White House.
While the news management demanded she straighten her hair, the public’s positive enthusiasm for Tolliver forced them to back down. “Once the word got out that I was being kept off the air because of my hair. The management had seen what a mess they had made and how dumb they looked. It was the opening for me to do a whole program called the African Influence on American Style,” she said. “In life, there is the bad thing and then the good thing that can come out of it.”
At WNBC-TV, she was an anchor and also was part of television’s first all-women co-anchor news team with Pia Lindstrom and Carol Jenkins. On News 12 Long Island, she was one of the station’s first anchors.
Now, almost 60 years after Tolliver sat behind a network anchor desk, there is a new generation of Black women holding power positions in network news. Journalists like Robin Roberts, anchor on “Good Morning America;” Gayle King, co-host of “CBS Mornings;” Deborah Roberts, co-anchor of ABC News “20/20”; Kristen Welker, host of NBC “Meet The Press” and Joy Reid, host of MSNBC “The ReidOut.” The president of MSNBC News is Rashida Jones and the former president of ABC News is Kim Godwin.
Tolliver dedicates Accidental Anchorwoman to the late journalist Gwen Ifill. Although New York City-born journalist Ifill had never personally met Tolliver, she grew up inspired by Tolliver covering local news. In 1999, Ifill, a former New York Times reporter, became the first Black woman to host a network news public affairs program with PBS’s Washington Week in Review. Tolliver also felt a special connection to Ifill because both women had lived with cancer. Tolliver is a cancer survivor. “I had never met, Gwen Ifill. To my surprise, somebody had pointed out that she had brought up my name when she was asked about some influences in her career. People that she watched and thought about,” said Tolliver. “I admired her. I would read her pieces when I saw her byline in the New York Times.”
Recently, Tolliver interviewed Linsey Davis, anchor of ABC’s Sunday edition of World News Tonight, via Zoom at the Easton Book Festival in Pennsylvania, where Tolliver currently lives. Davis moderated ABC’s Presidential Debate. “She and I both worked at ABC News. I worked there even before she was born,” laughed Tolliver. “This is what I am pointing to when I add the word connection to the title of my book. We never know unless we pay attention to the evidence of our connectedness to each other.”
“I asked Linsey, there were 67 million pairs of eyes watching you on the Presidential Debate, were you scared or nervous?” explained Tolliver. “She talked about her faith and her spirituality. She prayed before with her minister and by the time she was going to be in the studio she was not afraid. She did her work and was prepared. She said the one thing that really surprised her was that Number 45 (Trump), never looked at Kamala Harris.”
Tolliver admires Kamala Harris, but is also concerned, “I feel concerned that she is in a very precarious position. I admire her courage in taking it on. These are dangerous times, more dangerous than any time I experienced. Someone like her is not only a target for some unhinged evil person, but also her family.” she said.
“I saw Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney. Kamala Harris was just wonderful. In my opinion, she has managed to sidestep some land mines like what’s her foreign policy on considering Israel and Gaza,” said Tolliver. “She’s able to navigate that and still sound sensible and reasonable. She’s going to be where the buck stops.”
Chance, choice, change and connection permeate Melba Tolliver’s life. “The 8 billion people on this planet, we are interconnected. My mother encouraged me to write a book way back when because she thought of my life as being wonderful,” said Tolliver. “I’ve come to see that all of our lives if we pay attention and stay awake, are full of wonder!