Don Lemon was born on March 1,1966 and is an American television journalist best known for being a host on CNN from 2014 until 2023.
28 Facts About Don Lemon
2.
Don Lemon anchored weekend news programs on local television stations in Alabama and Pennsylvania during his early days as a journalist.
3.
Don Lemon received three regional Emmy Awards for his special report on real estate in Chicago and a business feature on craigslist.
4.
Don Lemon joined CNN in 2006, as a correspondent and later achieved prominence as the presenter of Don Lemon Tonight from 2014 to 2022.
5.
Don Lemon was born March 1,1966, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the son of Katherine Marie and Wilmon Lee Richardson.
6.
Don Lemon's father was a prominent attorney, who was part of a lawsuit successfully challenging segregation of public transportation in Baton Rouge.
7.
Don Lemon was born under the surname of his mother's then-husband, and discovered that Wilmon was his father when he was five.
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Don Lemon is of mostly African-American ancestry, along with Creole; his maternal grandmother was the daughter of a black mother and a white father, who had French and Scots-Irish ancestry.
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Don Lemon attended Baker High School, a public high school in the town of Baker in East Baton Rouge Parish.
10.
Don Lemon attended Louisiana State University where he was a Republican and voted for Ronald Reagan.
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Don Lemon later graduated from Brooklyn College with a major in broadcast journalism in 1996 at the age of 30.
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Don Lemon worked for Fox affiliates in St Louis and Chicago for several years, and was a correspondent for NBC affiliates in Philadelphia and Chicago.
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Early in his career, Don Lemon reported as a weekend news anchor for WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama, and for WCAU in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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Don Lemon reported for NBC News's New York City operations, including working as a correspondent for both Today, and NBC Nightly News; and as an anchor on Weekend Today and programs on MSNBC.
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Don Lemon won three Emmys for local reporting while at WMAQ.
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Don Lemon has been outspoken in his work at CNN, criticizing the state of cable news and questioning the network publicly.
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Don Lemon has voiced strong opinions on ways that the African American community can improve their lives, which has caused some controversy.
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Don Lemon has participated in CNN's New Year's Eve Live as a correspondent from a city in the Central Time Zone, most often alongside fellow CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin.
19.
In October 2018, during a discussion with Chris Cuomo on Cuomo Prime Time amid the Jeffersontown shooting, Don Lemon argued that Americans should not "demonize any one group or any one ethnicity", and that domestic terrorism by white supremacist Americans, "most of them radicalized to the right", were a bigger threat to the safety of the country than foreigners.
20.
Lemon who covered the trial on his CNN show Don Lemon Tonight did not disclose his involvement his interactions with Smollet.
21.
In December 2022, Don Lemon was involved in an onscreen argument with co-anchors Collins and Harlow over the pay inequity in womens' sports.
22.
Don Lemon argued that "people are more interested in the men".
23.
Don Lemon said that the firing came as a surprise, and that the network had failed to inform him in person, which CNN denied.
24.
In 2002, Lemon won an Edward R Murrow Award for his coverage of the capture of the DC area sniper, and other awards for reports on Hurricane Katrina.
25.
Don Lemon was voted as one of the 150 most influential African Americans by Ebony magazine in 2009.
26.
In December 2016, Don Lemon was honored with a Native Son Award, named after James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son, recognizing and to "encourage the increased visibility and impact of black gay men in society".
27.
Don Lemon dedicated the book to Tyler Clementi, a college student who killed himself after his roommate outed him online.
28.
Don Lemon met real estate agent Tim Malone in 2017, after which the two began dating.