Carl Chancellor is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has a passion for human rights and social justice issues. For more than 20 years he was a reporter and columnist for the Knight-Ridder news service and its flagship paper, the Akron Beacon Journal. As a reporter he covered criminal justice, social services, features, education, and politics. He was on the campaign trail traveling the country during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. In 1993 he was a lead writer on a yearlong series focusing on race relations—A Question of Color—that won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Meritorious Public Service.
Before coming to American Progress, he was a columnist and blogger for the online advocacy group Change.org writing about issues of race, poverty, and criminal justice. He also taught journalism at Howard University and contributes articles to a number of national publications, including USA Today, BlackAmericaWeb.com, and the website Civil Rights in America.