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Magic Johnson Donates $100,000 to Howard Communications School

By Jonathon Davis
Black College Wire

Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr., the former Los Angeles Lakers point guard recently inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame, donated $100,000 to the Howard University School of Communications at the school's 30th anniversary gala.

Johnson, now chief executive officer of Magic Johnson Enterprises, also received the Messenger Award for Excellence in Communications at the Oct. 17 gala, awarded because of his overall impact on communications, particularly in the black community.

"His focus for the past five or six years has been on diminishing the digital divide by getting African Americans more involved in the Internet and helping them to understand how communications can be a tool to help improve their lives," Communications School Dean Jannette Dates said.

"His push for the financial empowerment of African Americans by helping them learns how to access information to improve their own economic condition."

Howard University Student Association President Cornell Williamson said Johnson inspired him.

"Earvin Johnson lets us know that as African Americans, we can do anything we put our mind to," Williamson said.

Actress Debbie Allen-Nixon chair of the university's Board of Visitors and member of the Board of Trustees, spoke of the importance of having special events like the gala.

"It is because of nights like this that we see what the School of Communications is all about," Allen-Nixon said, "with a faculty and staff like Dean Jannette Dates, who are committed to helping students become the best they can be, and graduate with an opportunity of succeeding the challenging world of communications, journalism, broadcasting, radio and television."

Attendees saw a special video presentation of plans for a School of Communications Telecommunications Complex. "I suspect that there will be such a multiplicity of media and new uses of media that what we are doing in the early years of the millennium will seem very archaic," Dates said.

Fredricka Whitfield, CNN news anchor, and Jeff Burns Jr., associate publisher and senior vice president of Ebony magazine, were named alumni of the year.

Jonathon Davis is a student at Howard University who writes for The Hilltop.