Kent Garrett

Born: Brooklyn, NY 1942

Prepared at: Boys High School, Brooklyn, NY

I feel like in many ways I lived my life as an outsider or as an observer. I think that might be why I liked it [journalism] so much and why I sort of fit into it, in the sense that as a journalist you're an outsider, you're an observer, and I think I've been that way my whole life. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Kent's parents had come north from South Carolina during World War II, as part of the Great Migration of Blacks out of the south. Kent grew up in the Fort Greene Projects in Brooklyn, NY. After Harvard, he worked briefly in advertising, but then found his calling in television news. He spent his next thirty years in journalism, as a producer for ten years with The CBS Evening News and then years with NBC Nightly News. He then chucked it all and had an organic dairy farm in upstate New York, while keeping his hand in journalism all the while.