Leonard Pitts Jr.

Notable work and positions

The Miami Herald — Retired Columnist (1994– )
Winner, 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary

Biography

Leonard Garvey Pitts Jr., born October 11, 1957, is a retired columnist for The Miami Herald, where his twice-weekly column was syndicated nationally to more than 200 newspapers. He joined the Herald in 1991 as a pop music critic and became a general columnist in 1994, writing on race, politics, and culture. He gained national recognition for his September 12, 2001, column, “We'll go forward from this moment,” written the day after the September 11 attacks. In 2004 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, cited for “fresh, vibrant columns that spoke, with both passion and compassion, to ordinary people on often divisive issues.” He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California with a degree in English in 1977, and began his career as a music writer and editor for Soul magazine before working in Los Angeles radio. He is the author of several novels, including Freeman (2012) and Grant Park (2015), and the essay collection Forward from This Moment: Selected Columns, 1994–2008 (2009).