atuck23@nul.org

Angela Tuck is an Atlanta-based award-winning writer and editor.  She currently works as senior editor of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Intelligence Project researchers and writers track and obstruct the work of hate groups.

Angela spent most of her career as a writer and editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). As a feature writer and coach at the AJC, she both wrote and helped reporters develop their stories for Personal Journeys, the front page and other sections of the newspaper. In one such story, she chronicled the senior year of B.E.S.T. Academy High School graduate Walter Coggins, who lost both his parents to heart and lung disease. With sheer determination, and the help of mentors and family, Walter graduated with honors and earned a music scholarship to Young Harris College in North Georgia. Hundreds of readers responded to the story, offering money, medical care and words of encouragement to Walter.

For four years, Angela led the newspaper’s education team. During that time, she directed daily coverage of the Atlanta public schools cheating investigation and subsequent trials, the selection of several school superintendents, the challenges of charter schools, redistricting and other topics.

Angela has written extensively about the 1961 Freedom Riders and profiled the family of Denise McNair, one of four girls killed in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. She covered the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, sharing the stories of longtime civil rights activists, including Dr. Bernard LaFayette and the late Rev. C.T. Vivian.

 During her 26 years at the AJC, Angela also worked as the newsroom’s recruiter, trainer and public editor. As public editor, she wrote a weekly column that shed light on the newspaper’s coverage decisions. She has worked as a reporter at the Lexington [Kentucky] Herald-Leader and the Tampa Bay Times in St. Petersburg, Florida, and was a deputy metro editor at the Detroit Free Press.

She has mentored dozens of college students and young professionals and has worked with journalism students at Atlanta’s Washington High School and Columbia High School in Decatur, Georgia, to produce school newspapers. Angela has served on the boards of the Atlanta Press Club and the School of Communication and Media at Kennesaw State University. She was student chapter liaison for the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists and chair of the Special Honors Committee of the National Association of Black Journalists. 

A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Angela studied journalism at the University of Kentucky.