Karen L. Parker

Karen L. Parker, the first African-American woman undergraduate to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was born in Salisbury, North Carolina and grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.[1] Parker worked for the Winston-Salem Journal before attending UNC-Chapel Hill. She majored in journalism, was elected vice-president of the UNC Press Club, and served as editor of the UNC Journalist, the School of Journalism's newspaper in 1964.[2] After graduating in 1965, Parker was a copy editor for the Grand Rapids Press in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She also worked for the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers before returning to the Winston-Salem Journal.[3]

Ellyn Bache used Parker's diary when conducting research for her 1997 novel The Activist's Daughter, about student activists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1963.