Dana King

Honorary Degrees
 
 

California State University, East Bay

​Dana King is a distinguished journalist, artist and sculptor whose contributions have enriched California State University, East Bay, the broader East Bay region, California and the country. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Ms. King graduated from Ferris State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with a degree in marketing. After co-anchoring the debut of Good Morning America's Sunday edition and reporting for the CBS Morning News, she  joined San Francisco's KPIX as its co-anchor for the evening news.

During her career as a broadcast journalist, she received two Edward R. Murrow awards and five local Emmy awards. Now a nationally recognized artist, Ms. King has received commissions from institutions across the United States – from Montgomery, Alabama to Oakland, California. Though she began her career behind the desk, she has traveled all over the world and earned an Emmy for her reporting on the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras. In 2005, she won her another Emmy for her story on the anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda.   

Ms. King retired from journalism in 2012 in order to focus on her art, finding in sculpture another effective storytelling medium. In 2018, the Equal Justice Initiative commissioned a piece to be displayed at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The sculpture is a representation of the women who led and sustained the Montgomery bus boycott.

Ms. King's public sculptures have highlighted notable figures such as the Honorable William Byron Rumford, the first African American elected to the California State Legislature, William Lanson, a formerly enslaved Black man who fought for voting rights and expanded economic opportunities in Connecticut, and Dr. Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party.

Currently she serves on the Board of Trustees for the Oakland Museum of California. Since 2013, she has been a member of the museum's community engagement task force on issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and access. She also helped cofound See Black Womxn, which centers and promotes the efforts of Black women artists and activists.   

In recognition of her career in journalism and successful transition into a professional career of storytelling through sculpture, the Board of Trustees of the California State University and California State University, East Bay are proud to confer upon Dana King the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.