Leon Dash

Leon Dash (born (1944-03-16)March 16, 1944, in New Bedford, Massachusetts) is a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A former reporter for the Washington Post, he is the author of Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America, which grew out of the eight-part Washington Post series for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. On October 31, 2014 the Illinois Executive Ethics Commission found Dash in violation of the Illinois State Employees and Officials Ethics Act.

Biography

Dash grew up in New York City and later attended Howard University. He spent 1969-1970 as a Peace Corps high school teacher in Kenya. He joined the Washington Post in 1965 where he worked as a member of the special projects unit, as part of the investigative desk, and as the West Africa Bureau Chief.

Rosa Lee, which started as an eight-part series for the Washington Post in September 1994, is the story of one woman and her family's struggle against poverty in the projects of Washington, D.C.