Robin Roberts

This native Mississippian was born in 1960. Her father was a retired Air Force Colonel; a dignified African American who flew for the legendary Tuskegee Airmen during WWII despite being often told that his race would deny him such an opportunity. Her mother was a schoolteacher who held her children to impeccable standards of grammar and speech. Little wonder that Robin Roberts would one day become a trailblazer herself.

Robin’s first love was sports. At ten she became the Mississippi state bowling champion who matured into a champion high school basketball player and went on to be a star collegiate player for Southeastern Louisiana University.

After college, Robin set out to play professional ball. When that didn’t pan out, she reached in her heart for another dream, one that had been ignited years earlier in the heart of a pig-tailed child watching Wide World of Sports from her family’s home in Mississippi. At the time the idea of hosting a show like that one day seemed impossible but the grown-up Robin was ready to go for it. She retrained her sights on a journalism career.

Robin Roberts began her broadcasting career as a sports anchor and reporter. She began racking up awards almost immediately. Among other honors, she became the first African American anchorwoman on ESPN, the first African American female host of Wide World of Sports, and the first female host of an NFL pre-game show.

Today Robin Roberts is the co-anchor of ABC’s Good Morning America, a twenty year veteran with three Emmys to her credit but her emotional on air coverage after Hurricane Katrina and her work to aid the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast reminded anyone who may have forgotten that she’d always be a Mississippi girl.

Robin is also the author of From the Heart: Seven Rules to Live By. In today’s Southern Quote we pay tribute to the power of one of her guiding principles. Robin Roberts says, “Dream big, but focus small.”