Bernadette Carey Smith, Black Reporter in Mostly White Newsrooms, Dies at 83

Bernadette Carey Smith, who within the Nineteen Sixties was one of many first Black girls to be employed as a reporter at The New York Occasions and The Washington Put up, died on Dec. 5 at an assisted dwelling advanced in Tuckahoe, N.Y. She was 83.

Her nephew Scott Taylor mentioned the trigger was arteriosclerotic heart problems. Her demise was dropped at the eye of The New York Occasions solely final week.

Ms. Smith, who married Bruce Smith, an government on the American Communications Group, in 1980, was nonetheless Bernadette Carey when, in October 1965, The Occasions employed her to work on its girls’s information part, known as Meals, Fashions, Household, Furnishings.

She might effectively have been the newspaper’s first Black girl reporter, though data are inconclusive; definitely she was one in every of solely a handful of Black journalists, male or feminine, employed by The Occasions earlier than the late Nineteen Sixties.

The ladies who labored for the part mentioned they had been ignored by the remainder of the paper. For many of its life span the division was set aside from the primary newsroom — relegated to “some darkish little nook of The Occasions,” as Phyllis Levin, one other alumna of the part, put it in 2018 in a Occasions article.

Ms. Smith’s job concerned writing concerning the newest fashions and generally the celebrities who wore them. In late 1965, the Italian film star Sandra Milo traveled to New York for the premiere of her latest film, Federico Fellini’s “Juliet of the Spirits,” and introduced along with her a wholly blue wardrobe and 5 fur coats.

“The day after she arrived,” Ms. Smith wrote, “the fur coats, together with one sable, one chinchilla and a mink, had been lacking,” apparently stolen from the actress’s lodge room. The article went on to element what Ms. Milo shopped for in New York and what she would put on to the film premiere. (What occurred to the furs remained a thriller.)

She additionally wrote concerning the New York go to of an Austrian prince, collectors of wierd devices and what kids within the viewers had been sporting at performances of “The Nutcracker” at Lincoln Heart.

Ms. Smith stayed at The Occasions for 2 years, then joined The Put up. Richard Prince, a Put up alumnus, mentioned in a memorial article on his web site, journal-ism.com, that she was the newspaper’s second Black feminine reporter, after Dorothy Gilliam.

At The Put up, Ms. Smith was given extra substantial assignments, overlaying a speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Nationwide Cathedral, the funeral of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and different high-profile occasions.

“Her expertise and perseverance produced extraordinary tales that humanized nationwide information at a time when all too many stellar girls of all colours and backgrounds had been shunted off to the Pink ghetto of society pages,” Myra MacPherson, who began working at The Put up simply as Ms. Smith was leaving, mentioned by electronic mail.

Ms. Smith’s Put up profession additionally lasted about two years earlier than it was introduced that she would change into editor in chief of a brand new Black girls’s journal known as Sapphire.

However the title Sapphire didn’t stick, and neither did Ms. Smith: By the point the journal, renamed Essence, revealed its first challenge in Could 1970, she had been changed. Edward Lewis, one of many journal’s founders, in his e book “The Man From Essence: Making a Journal for Black Girls” (2014), mentioned her request for a 5 p.c share within the firm was one sticking level.

Ms. Smith started working at Vogue as a substitute, and by the tip of 1969 she made information herself in courting the tv character David Frost. “Duo at Asti’s: David Frost and Vogue author Bernadette Carey,” The Every day Information of New York wrote that December in a gossip merchandise.

She and Mr. Frost had met at a celebration in 1968 and had been an merchandise for a 12 months or two, attending dinners with boldface names like Aristotle and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

“David had a community present in America by then and was the toast of New York,” Ms. Smith recalled in an interview with The Mail of Britain in 2013, when Mr. Frost died. “He’d taken a home within the Hamptons. I didn’t look too dangerous, and I had a reasonably respectable wardrobe, which David appreciated.”

However by mid-1970 Mr. Frost moved on to the actress Diahann Carroll.

Bernadette Alice Louise Carey was born on Oct. 27, 1939, in Manhattan. Her father, Dr. Jocelyn Everard Carey, was a household doctor, and her mom, Mae (McDonald) Carey, was a lifetime member of the N.A.A.C.P. The household moved from Harlem to Mount Vernon, N.Y., when Bernadette was a toddler.

She earned a bachelor’s diploma in historical past at Smith Faculty in 1961 and labored at Esquire and Look magazines earlier than becoming a member of The Occasions.

After her journalism profession, Ms. Smith based a public relations agency in Chicago. In 1979, The Chicago Solar-Occasions interviewed her for an article about “impartial girls with profitable careers who’ve chosen to go it alone” — that’s, had been single by selection.

“I’ve grown accustomed to the liberty to do no matter I need, each time I need,” she mentioned, “and I can not give that up simply.”

However the subsequent 12 months, she married Mr. Smith. He died in 2015.

Earlier than coming into assisted dwelling a couple of weeks in the past, Ms. Smith had lived in Bronxville, N.Y. She is survived by a sister, Yvonne Carey Sterioff.