Women’s History Month has been celebrated in March since 1987. The Atlanta Voice will feature stories on women making history in the City of Atlanta in classrooms, boardrooms, on basketball courts, soccer fields, on stages, and on big and small screens. This is the first of that series.
-Donnell Suggs
Editor in Chief
For Nicole Carr, a passion for journalism and teaching the craft of reporting stories began long before she first stepped into a newsroom or classroom.
Growing up in a military family, Carr recalled her early days spent in the living room watching the news with her father, United States Army Colonel Quill R. Ferguson, Sr. (retired), making the most of the time they had together. For Ferguson, watching the news was critical. For Carr, journalism became an outlet for her early teachings in strong Black storytelling.
“If you really wanted to spend time with him, you would just go sit right next to him as he turned CNN on,” said Carr. “He was big on keeping up with current events, and that is where we bonded a lot.”
Carr tells people her real journalism journey began in the eighth grade when she and her family were stationed in Panama during the final years of the Panama Canal Treaty. The turning point was during a social studies assignment when Carr was asked to write an article about a guest speaker at her school, Terrence Roberts, one of the nine students of the Little Rock Nine.
“That was the first time I wrote an article, and then the journalism bug just took off from there,” said Carr, a wife and mother.
She would continue to hone her writing and journalism skills throughout high school and undergrad at Winston-Salem University in North Carolina, eventually becoming the editor-in-chief of the school’s student newspaper. Carr, then known by her maiden name, Ferguson, would continue her education in grad school at Syracuse University. Next was the beginning of her broadcast journalism career, with her first stop at an NBC affiliate station, WECT in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 2005. Carr also revealed that although she made $18,500 a year, the experience she got from it was the true stepping stone.
Her award-winning career has taken her from reporting for the local ABC affiliate, ABC 11/WTVD in Fayetteville, North Carolina, to WSB-TV in Atlanta, and to investigative reporting for ProPublica.
Carr credits most of her leadership experience to her membership in Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, where she developed a deeper sense of confidence, responsibility, and service, which has helped her mentor others in journalism.
“We’re in a time where people do not take seriously the responsibility of communicating the truth,” Carr says. “I’m proud that I’ve never had anyone say that I got the facts wrong. They may not have liked the story, but I’ve never had someone say, ‘You got that wrong.’”
Today, Carr teaches journalism and History of the Black Press at Morehouse College, helping prepare the next generation of Black storytellers to navigate the challenges of media storytelling while remaining grounded in pride and truth.
“I don’t believe my work is for the living,” said Carr. “I believe that everything I do, especially in this season of my career, is a response to the call from ancestors, and it’s a gift and a guide to those who are not with us yet.”
Carr’s forthcoming book, The Price of Exclusion: The Pursuit of Healthcare in a Segregated Nation (HarperCollins), debuts on June 16.
