Bernadette Carey Smith
American journalist (1939–2022)
Bernadette Carey Smith (October 27, 1939 – December 5, 2022), also known by the byline Bernadette Carey, was an American journalist. In the 1960s, she was one of the first African-American women to work as a reporter at The New York Times and at The Washington Post.
Early life and education
She was born in Manhattan in 1939, with the name Alice Bernadette Carey or Bernadette Alice Louise Carey. Her parents were Dr. Jocelyn Everard Carey, a family physician, and Mae Carey (née McDonald), a homemaker and member of the NAACP.
Career
Carey was the first Black female reporter to work at The New York Times. She covered fashion and society news.
Carey served as editor-in-chief of Essence magazine in the initial stages of its development, but left before its first issue was published. Then a "star" at The Washington Post, she had been recommended to the publication's founding partners by Clay Felker, the editor of New York magazine, because of her experience with general market magazines, including Esquire and Look, as well as The New York Times women's news department. Carey attended meetings with investors and advertisers, compiled market research, and worked on ideas for initial issues and stories. However, she had disagreements over the magazine's editorial direction with the four male partners, who also balked when she asked for a five-percent stake in The Hollingsworth Group.
“Bernadette Carey Smith” enters the record as american journalist (1939–2022). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bernadette, Carey and Smith can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Bernadette Carey Smith” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Bernadette, Carey and Smith provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 24, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q117035166. VIAF identifies the subject as 27156219087404741788. The Library of Congress control number is no2019091759. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bernadette Carey Smith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.