Charles Sumner "Chuck" Stone, Jr. (July 21, 1924 – April 6, 2014) was an American pilot, newspaper editor, journalism professor, and author. He was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II and was the first president of the National Association of Black Journalists, serving from 1975 to 1977. Passionate about racial issues and supportive of many liberal causes, he refused to follow any party line, "but called the issues as he saw them." Early life Chuck Stone was born July 21, 1924 in St. Louis, Missouri to Charles Sumner Stone Sr and Madeline Chafin and raised in Hartford, Connecticut. Stone served in World War II, where he was member of the Tuskegee Airmen. He had already been admitted to Harvard University after completing his military service, but chose instead to matriculate at Wesleyan University, receiving degrees in political science and economics. He was the first African-American undergraduate in several decades at Wesleyan, graduating in the class of 1948 and serving as the commencement speaker. Stone subsequently received a master's degree in sociology from the University of Chicago. After completing his education, he worked for the Chicago department store Carson Pirie Scott, serving as the store's first African-American executive. He then studied law for eighteen months at the University of Connecticut before spending two years in Egypt, Gaza, and India as a representative for CARE. Professional career Journalist and educator Chuck Stone's career in journalism began in 1958, when his friend Al Duckett, then Editor of The New York Age, hired him as a reporter. Several months later he was promoted to Editor by the newspaper's owner, Samuel B. Fuller. Stone worked as a columnist for The Philadelphia Daily News from 1972 to 1991. Stone was very critical of the Philadelphia Police Department's record of brutality towards African-Americans, which made him a trusted middleman between Philadelphia police and criminal suspects, more than 75 of whom 'surrendered' to Stone rather than to the cops. In 1975, he was the M. Lyle Spencer Visiting Professor of Journalism in the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He taught journalism at the University of Delaware for seven years, and from 1986–1988, he served as the House Advisor for the Martin Luther King Humanities House at the University of Delaware. Stone later became the Walter Spearman Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he retired