Ted Turner Changed TV Forever — Here Are The 11 Black CNN Anchors Who Built His Legacy

When Ted Turner launched CNN on June 1, 1980, he handed the chief anchor chair to Bernard Shaw. No other network was giving a Black man that role at that hour with that authority. Turner died Wednesday at 87, closing the loop on a 45 year run that ran straight from Shaw’s first broadcast to Abby Phillip’s NewsNight. The Black faces in between built modern Black television journalism in real time, on air, in a country that did not always want to watch.

1. Bernard Shaw
The man Ted Turner trusted with the launch. Shaw anchored CNN from day one in 1980 and stayed for 21 years. He delivered the first images of the Gulf War from a Baghdad hotel room in January 1991, lying on the floor with Peter Arnett and John Holliman as bombs fell on the city. That broadcast made CNN a global brand and made Shaw the gold standard for composure on live television. He retired in 2001 and died in 2022. Every Black anchor on this list owes him a phone call’s worth of thanks.

2. Charlayne Hunter-Gault
She integrated the University of Georgia in 1961 before she ever picked up a microphone. Hunter-Gault joined CNN in 1999 as the network’s Johannesburg bureau chief and covered the African continent with depth American audiences rarely got from cable news. She had already made her name at PBS and NPR. CNN added another chapter to a career that spanned every major civil rights story of the 20th century.

3. Soledad O’Brien
She anchored CNN’s morning shows through the 2000s and built the “Black in America” documentary franchise that ran from 2008 forward. Those specials were the first time a major American news network had given a Black journalist that kind of platform to report on Black life with that kind of budget. She left CNN in 2013 to run her own production company, but the template she built is still being copied across the industry.

4. Suzanne Malveaux
The first Black woman to cover the White House for CNN. Malveaux reported on the Bush and Obama administrations, anchored “Around the World,” and brought a measured authority to political coverage that mattered most when the White House story became a Black story for the first time in 2008. In 2014 she returned to Washington full time to be closer to her mother, who was battling ALS, and she chronicled that journey in a CNN series. She left the network in January 2023 after 20 years.

5. Roland Martin
CNN’s go to political analyst through the Obama years. Martin had a syndicated radio show, a TV One platform, and a CNN seat all running at once. He was the loudest Black voice on CNN’s panels at a moment when the network needed one. After CNN, he built Roland Martin Unfiltered into one of the most influential Black political broadcasts in the country, proving the audience he had been speaking to was always there.

6. Fredricka Whitfield
Anchor of CNN Newsroom on weekends since 2002. Whitfield is the longest serving Black woman on air in CNN history. Her shifts have covered every major news weekend of the last two decades, from Hurricane Katrina to George Floyd to the January 6 hearings. She rarely makes herself the story, which is exactly why she has stayed in the chair while everyone else has cycled through.

7. Don Lemon
The most argued about Black anchor of the cable news era. Lemon held the CNN Tonight chair from 2014 to 2022 and became one of the loudest Black voices challenging Trump on prime time television. CNN fired him in 2023 amid internal conflict over his role on the morning show. Whatever the back end politics, his run defined an era when Black anchors stopped pretending race could be discussed neutrally and started saying what the audience already knew.

8. Victor Blackwell
Weekend anchor who built a quieter authority over more than a decade at the network. Blackwell anchors “First of All,” CNN’s only show framed explicitly around Black communities and the issues affecting them. The show launched in 2024 and gave Black audiences a dedicated weekly hour on CNN for the first time in the network’s history. That alone makes Blackwell’s name a footnote that should be a chapter.

9. Abby Phillip
She got the 10 p.m. weeknight chair, the slot that built Larry King and Anderson Cooper. “NewsNight with Abby Phillip” launched in 2023 and put a Black woman in the highest profile time slot the network had to offer. Phillip came up through ABC and Politico, joined CNN in 2017, and made her name moderating debates and the political roundtables that now drive most of cable’s audience.

10. Laura Coates
Former federal prosecutor turned legal analyst turned 11 p.m. anchor. “Laura Coates Live” launched in October 2023 at a moment when the country was watching multiple Trump trials run in parallel. Coates brings the courtroom voice into prime time and has become one of CNN’s most visible faces during major legal news cycles. Her book “Just Pursuit” became a New York Times bestseller in 2022.

11. Sara Sidner
Anchor of “CNN News Central” and one of the most decorated foreign correspondents the network has ever put on air. Sidner reported from Mumbai, Cairo, Gaza, and Ferguson before settling into the anchor chair. In 2024 she announced her stage 3 breast cancer diagnosis live on the air and kept anchoring through chemotherapy. That broadcast moment alone is one of the most remembered the network has produced this decade.

Turner did not personally hire most of these anchors. He stepped back from CNN in the early 2000s after the Time Warner AOL merger pushed him out of the company he built. But he hired the man who made the next 45 years possible. Bernard Shaw was the first call. Every Black face that has anchored CNN since has been part of the sentence Ted Turner started in 1980.