Remembering Angelo Henderson

Matthew Dolan of The Wall Street Journal writes about journalist Angelo Henderson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the Journal in 1999 and who died this weekend at the age of 51.

Dolan writes, “Other stories with his byline delved into the world of styling contests for African-American hair and the tricked-out wheelchairs used by disabled basketball players in the inner city.

“Paul Steiger, the Journal’s former top editor who founded the investigative website ProPublica, called Mr. Henderson’s nearly 3,500-word front page, prizewinning story among the most dramatic the paper ever published.

“‘It provides a harrowing, yet empathetic, look at an attempted drugstore stickup that ended in death—the kind of crime that usually fades from public consciousness after a brief blur of publicity,’ Mr. Steiger wrote in his Pulitzer Prize nomination letter for Mr. Henderson.

“Mr. Henderson’s boss in Detroit remembered the young reporter coming to him one January day to tell him about a small story he had heard about involving a Detroit shooting. ‘I said, ‘What shooting? It is Detroit, there are a lot of shootings,’ said Bob Simison, the Journal’s former Detroit bureau chief.

“But Mr. Henderson was convinced it could be a compelling story for the Journal if he were able to describe what it was actually like for a store owner to shoot a man to death to save the life of himself and his store clerk. In the story, Mr. Henderson was able to convince the reluctant druggist to tell his story. He also spent months tracking down the assailant’s family in Chicago, providing an intimate look at the lingering impact of crime and violence on both sides.”

Read more here.