Veteran journalist joins MCIR to tell the stories of domestic violence against some of Mississippi’s most vulnerable mothers and children

By Mississippi Center For Investigative Reporting

Ann Marie Cunningham

Ann Marie Cunningham, a veteran journalist/producer and author of a best-seller, is joining the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting as one Columbia University’s 2020 Lipman Fellows.

The Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights at the Columbia Journalism School on Wednesday announced Cunningham was chosen from a diverse group of candidates “who exemplify the center’s mission of informing and shaping the way we cover race, gender and civil and human rights.”

Cunningham will work with award-winning MCIR founder and investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell and assist MCIR in its continuing coverage of domestic violence against women of color.

Cunningham’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Technology Review, The Nation and The New Republic. Most recently, she has reported on domestic violence and the trafficking of young Native American women.

Cunningham was an investigator for President Jimmy Carter’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, the only presidential commission with a task force of journalists. She is co-author with The New York Times best-seller “Ryan White: My Own Story,” the autobiography of the boy infected with AIDS who successfully sued for the right to go back to school in Indiana. She was awarded a fellowship from Columbia Teachers College’s Hechinger Institute for Education and the Media and she has been a writer in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and elsewhere.

In the news release announcing the 2020 Lipman Fellows, Professor Jelani Cobb, a co-leader of the selection committee, said, “Even amid the unprecedented challenges of a global pandemic the work of shedding light upon the infractions of civil and human rights goes on."

Cunningham will receive $10,000 and will work remotely with a faculty member throughout the duration of her fellowship. She will go to New York at the completion of her fellowship to conduct a public presentation of her work and engage students at the Columbia Journalism School.

“I am honored to be part of the MCIR team,” Cunningham said.

“Long before this pandemic struck, domestic violence has shattered the lives of some of Mississippi’s most vulnerable women and children,” Mitchell said. “Their voices are typically not heard; now they will be.”