Interesting facts about Don Lemon
Lemon is one of the few openly gay black men in working in broadcasting
Here are some fascinating facts about Don Lemon:
Birth and early life.
Lemon was born on March 1, 1966, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana currently 58 years old.
He is the son of Katherine Marie (Bouligney) and Wilmon Lee Richardson.
Lemon discovered that Richardson was his father when he was five since he was born under the surname of his mother's then-husband.
He graduated from Brooklyn College with a major in broadcast journalism in 1996 at the age of 30.
Career and where he has worked
He began his career at WNYW in New York City as a news assistant while still in college.
- He reported as the weekend news anchor for WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama,
- WCAU in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
- Fox affiliate KTVI in St. Louis, Missouri, and Fox's Chicago affiliate
- Lemon reported for NBC News's New York City operations,
- Worked as a correspondent for both Today and NBC Nightly News;
- Weekend Today and programs on MSNBC.
- In 2003, he began working at NBC-owned-and-operated station WMAQ-TV in Chicago and was a reporter and local news co-anchor.
- Lemon joined CNN in September 2006.
Lemon was fired by CNN on April 24, 2023, despite his contract expiring in 2026.
After several on-air controversies and reports of alleged decades-long instances of misogyny, he was fired from CNN.
Lemon announced plans for a new show on Twitter, The Don Lemon Show on January 9, 2024.
Awards
- Edward R. Murrow Award for his coverage of the capture of the D.C. area sniper, and other awards for reports on Hurricane Katrina. (2002)
- Chicago / Midwest Emmy Awards—one for a business feature about Craigslist real estate listings, "Life on Craigslist", and two for reporting on the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa, ( 2006)
- Lemon was voted as one of the 150 most influential African Americans by Ebony magazine,(2009 )
- The Advocate listed Lemon as one of the publication's 50 Most Influential LGBTQ People in Media (2014).
- Lemon was honored with a Native Son Award, named after James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son (1955), recognizing and to "encourage the increased visibility and impact of black gay men in society" (2016).
- Out named him on its Power 50 list of "the most influential LGBTQ people in the USA" ( 2016).
Intimate life
Lemon publicly came out as gay in his 2011 memoir, Transparent. He is one of the few openly gay black men in broadcasting. Lemon is engaged to Tim Malone a real estate agent.
The couple met in 2017 and announced that they were engaged to be married in April 2019.
Lemon has previously shared he was sexually abused when he was five or six by a neighbour's teenage boy, and it was not until he was thirty that he told his mother about it.