Upon graduation from Princeton University with a degree in politics, Melvin McCray was fortunate to land a job as a reporter at Time Incorporated. He got a crash course in journalism while working beside some of the giants in the business. He first worked in the nation and world sections of Time Magazine. During the mid-1970s, Time had a circulation of 25 million readers. McCray found it to be an exhilarating experience presenting local, national, and international news to millions of people around the country. At the same time, he found it a formidable journalistic responsibility to get the story right.

John Durniak, Time’s director of photography, took McCray under his wing and encouraged him to continue taking photos while he was a reporter. He also helped McCray develop an eye for a good news story. Durniak believed his photographers were reporters telling stories in pictures, and McCray was a reporter who aspired to be a photographer.

Henry Luce’s Life Magazine was published as a weekly news magazine from 1936 to 1972. It was revived as an intermittent “Special Issue,” and McCray jumped at the chance to work with managing editor Phil Kunhardt on the greatest photojournalism magazine of all time. He was a reporter on the special issue of Life Magazine, the Year In Pictures 1976, and Remarkable American Women 1776-1976. The editors chose 166 women, but they could have selected twice that number. McCray remembers making the argument for the inclusion of Leontyne Price. She was a phenomenal talent, dubbed the “prima donna assoulta” of the operatic world, but for some reason, she only made it onto the “maybe column” for the Life special issue. McCray presented a strong case on her behalf, and she eventually made the cut. Price took her rightful place beside Maria Callas and Marian Anderson among Life Magazine’s remarkable American women.   

McCray developed a friendship with photographer, filmmaker, composer, and writer Gordon Parks—a true renaissance man. He left Life Magazine in 1968 but was a regular visitor at Time, Inc. Parks advised McCray, “Don’t allow anyone to set boundaries, always strive to free your imagination.” Advice he took to heart. 

McCray spent his last couple of years as a staff reporter for Money Magazine. One story he pitched was a feature on legendary NBA basketball great Julius Erving called Basketball's Six Million Dollar Man. It was an incredible four years of working in one of the most creative environments McCray had ever experienced. It was there that he began developing the craft of storytelling.

In 1981, Melvin McCray embarked on a still photography assignment in Haiti. Three advertising agencies were competing for the US tourism account. Hired by the Kaufman and Maraffi Advertising, McCray spent two weeks photographing eleven cities throughout Haiti. Based on his photographs and the ad agency’s presentation, the government of Jean-Claude Duvalier awarded the agency the U.S. domestic tourism account. The "Haiti, It's Spellbinding" campaign blanketed magazines, newspapers,s, and radio. 

While working on the assignment, McCray developed a love and respect for Haitian history and culture. He returned to Haiti in 1985 to photograph the country and its people. While there, he stumbled upon a story that would become one of his peak experiences at ABC News. It was the story of Guy Theodore and the Hospital of Mercy. As a result of McCray's reporting, Theodore became the subject of a Peter Jennings profile when he was made ABC News "Person of the Week" in 1994. As a child, Theodore promised his father if God would allow him to become a doctor, he would someday return to build a hospital in his home village. American viewers learned how one man made a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of people in Northern Haiti. In addition, viewers of the broadcast donated thousands of dollars to the U.S. non-profit that supported the hospital. 

McCray refers to this moment as one of his peak experiences in journalism. He was able to bring to light the story of a heroic Haitian helping his fellow countrymen at a time when chaos and lawlessness were sweeping the country. At the same time, the story spurred hundreds of Americans to support his humanitarian efforts unselfishly.

When a 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti in January of 2010, McCray launched a campaign to raise money for Theodore's hospital by offering his photographs for sale. All proceeds from the sale of McCray's photos were donated to the Hospital of Mercy via the U.S. non-profit Promise for Haiti.

Melvin McCray was an editor at ABC News from 1981 to 2009 and worked on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Nightline, and Peter Jennings Special Reports. During this period, ABC News grew into a dominant force in broadcast journalism. It was a highly collaborative environment, with ideas flowing freely among producers, correspondents, and editors. His work with Dick Schaap, Beth Nissen, Robert Krulwich, Michelle Norris, Charlie Gibson, and Peter Jennings was noteworthy because these were consummate storytellers who advanced the craft each time they worked together on a project.

While at ABC News, McCray honed his journalism skills and storytelling ability. In the process, McCray won nearly every major journalism award, including the Emmy Award, George Foster Peabody Award, and four Alfred I. DuPont Columbia University Awards.

McCray developed a personal friendship and a close professional relationship with ABC News anchor Peter Jennings. He often pitched story ideas to Jennings, who broadcasted them on the evening news. One such story was the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that featured an interview McCray conducted with noted New York University Law professor Derrick Bell.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Bell worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and brought suit against 300 municipalities and school districts to force them to desegregate. This experience gave him an alternate view of the 50th anniversary. In Bell's analysis, desegregation only benefited a small segment of the black population, while most black students remained in all-black schools. He believed that civil rights leaders should have used the 1954 Supreme Court decision as leverage to force school districts to make black schools equal.

It was a story in which McCray was a cameraman, sound technician, producer, and editor. It was highly unusual but made possible because of McCray's close relationship with Jennings, Jennings's eye for a good story, and his willingness to break previously established conventions (play video).

McCray, producer Robert Aglow, and correspondent Ned Potter were recipients of the Alfred I. DuPont Columbia University Award for their work on an extraordinary story of a shaman in Surinam, South America, who taught researchers from pharmaceutical companies giant Bristol Myers Squibb the herbal secrets of the rainforest.

On June 9, 1986, Melvin McCray won the Monitor Award for Best Editor in News/Documentaries for his work on the 1985 Year Ender. The Video Tape Production Association presents the awards. The Year Ender is a news feature that takes the year's major events and creates a compilation set to music. McCray and producer Betsy Rich spent two months combing through more than 250 tapes to tell a visually engaging and creatively stimulating story.

The segment “is not just a look back at the year's biggest stories but a look at how people still survived despite the horrible events,” says Rich. “It was a challenge,” says McCray, “because we had to suffer through hours and hours of death and destruction caused by earthquakes and mudslides, volcanic eruptions, floods, airplane crashes, and man’s inhumanity to man.”

“Through it all,” says McCray, “we saw the human spirit's triumph and tried to bring that out in the piece.”  The story started and ended with Hubert Laws, Quincy Jones, and Chick Corea's rendition of "Amazing Grace," which captured the mood of the tragic, somber, and triumphant events of the past year.

Melvin McCray formed Media Genesis Productions and produced his first documentary in 1978, Brothers and Sisters Should Love One Another: A Look At Black Male-Female Relations. He embarked upon the project as a result of seeing the Broadway production of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange. McCray was shocked and concerned over the actresses' negative stories of black male-female relations and decided to examine these issues in a documentary.

The film began as a class project in an evening video production course he was enrolled in at Global Village, a New York City media center run by independent filmmaker John Reilly. McCray brought together actresses Sharita Hunt and Laurie Carlos from the Broadway play and Abiodun Oyewole, a founding member of the Last Poets, who had written a play called Comments on Colored Girls.

A raucous and emotional confrontation erupted between Oyewole and Carlos that highlighted the chasm that often exists between black men and women and was recorded on tape. The film won the American Film Institute’s Independent Filmmaker Award (1979), and McCray was given a $10,000 cash award. This was a turning point for McCray. He left his reporting job at Time Inc., created Media Genesis Productions in 1979, and devoted his life to storytelling in the video medium.

Melvin McCray produced, photographed, and edited the stories of seven women who were victims of domestic violence. The videos were created for the Urban Resource Institute, a non-profit organization that runs six domestic violence shelters around New York City. The campaign was part of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October of 2014. Linda's story was viewed by over 40,000 people online. Her story demonstrates that domestic violence can affect any of us. A successful entrepreneur who owns a Manhattan clothing boutique, Linda was in an abusive relationship for 15 years until she finally broke free. “I want people to understand that there’s no typical face of domestic violence—people think it’s a problem that only affects lower-income and minority groups, but that's not true.” See for more information, see: http://urinyc.org/dvfree/.

On December 13, 2014, McCray covered the Millions March for Justice for Eric Garner in New York City. The footage was so compelling that WABC's public affairs program, Here And Now, aired the video. The program was produced, photographed, and edited by McCray. Organized by the Justice League, a diverse crowd of more than 25,000 people marched through the streets to protest the recent police killings of unarmed black men.

McCray produced, directed, and edited this biography of Father Michael Lapsley, an Anglican Priest and social justice activist in Cape Town, South Africa. He was a Chaplin in the African National Congress at the height of the apartheid era. While living in exile in Zimbabwe in 1990, he lost both hands and an eye in a letter bomb attack. After recovering from his injuries, he began listening to the stories of the survivors whom he counseled at the Trauma Centre for Victims of Violence and Torture in South Africa.

Father Michael realized the importance of giving people a space where their experiences could be shared and acknowledged. He founded the Institute for the Healing of Memories so that people could find relief from trauma. Father Michael travels the world giving lectures and healing of memories workshops. He has become a much loved and respected advocate for reconciliation, forgiveness, and restorative justice.

The profiles of Black Princeton Alumni were created for the Coming Back: Reconnection Princeton's Black Alumni Conference held in October 2014. The program profiles Princeton alumnus Maya Lawrence, Cato Laurencin, David Rousseave, Thurman White, Jared Crooks, Veneka Chadwedira, Eve Thompson, and Wesley Harris.

When McCray retired from ABC News in 2009, he wondered if he would miss contributing to a network news organization that reached 9 million every evening and working on the big news story of the day or of the century. According to McCray, the only big news story that made him long for his old editing console at ABC News was the death of Nelson Mandela, a man revered around the world for his integrity, vision, and strength. Fortunately, McCray was able to shoot and edit the memorial service for Mandela at the Riverside Church and post it on the highly regarded Global Post website (see http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/131216/new-york-city-fitting-tribute-nelson-mandela-vid. McCray was able to make his contribution to one of the biggest news stories of the year. Thankfully, the Internet has made everyone a potential broadcaster with the ability to reach millions of viewers worldwide.

In the fall of 1999, McCray was awarded a visiting professor fellowship to teach a seminar of his own design at Princeton University. He took a leave of absence from ABC News and became the Ferris Professor of Journalism for one semester. McCray taught a course called the Politics of Images in Television News. His invited speakers were Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Charlie Gibson, Gil Noble, and Robert Krulwich. McCray also brought his class to ABC News headquarters in New York and spent the day touring the facility and meeting with Jennings and other staff members.

Over the course of the semester, he taught the students the history of broadcast journalism as well as video production and editing. McCray was intrigued to see the light bulbs of inspiration go on inside their heads. Not only did he teach storytelling to his students, but he found the process of watching their thoughts develop fascinating. His love for teaching was ignited.

McCray taught the students video production and editing. He divided the class into three groups and assigned each a video project. McCray also videotaped his lectures and the presentations of his guest speakers. He built a website with the assistance of Princeton's New Media Center, incorporating photographs, video, teleconferencing, and text. This was a bold step forward in the fall of 1999 when most of the country was still using dial-up modems. Princeton University used McCray's website as a teaching tool so that other faculty could learn how to get the most out of digital technology. 

In January of 2000, McCray was selected to deliver the keynote address at the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Ceremony at Princeton’s Richardson Auditorium. It had become a tradition that brought the Princeton community together to honor King. It was also an opportunity to give awards to high school and junior high school students for the best King poster and essay.

McCray decided to bring his broadcast journalism training to bear and create a presentation that the Princeton community would not soon forget. He crafted a series of seven Martin Luther King, Jr. speeches that spoke to issues that were never brought up during the annual commemoration. McCray was aware that the public was generally fixated on the “I Have a Dream” speech. However, he was convinced that King was more of a visionary and complex thinker. Therefore, McCray assembled appropriate segments of King's speeches to make his case. The portrait that emerged from McCray's presentation was not of an idealized dreamer but of a fighter who "worked, planned and struggled for a better world," McCray said.

But more incredible than the presentation of forgotten King speeches was a realization McCray came to three days before his keynote speech. Twenty-eight years earlier, he sat as a sophomore in a Sociology 102 class in Richardson Auditorium and imagined himself on stage addressing hundreds of people. McCray remembered that he had visualized his keynote a quarter of a century earlier. He incorporated his vision into his address. McCray led the assembled audience in a guided visualization exercise and invited the adults and the students to join in.

Richard Juste, a member of the Princeton class of 2001, founded the Princeton Summer Journalism Program. It brings to campus twenty 11th and 12th graders from disadvantaged backgrounds from around the country for ten days for an intensive journalism program. From 2002 to 2014, McCray voluntarily taught a one-day broadcast workshop to these students.

Based on his teaching experience at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and his observations of the exploding social media and online video sharing platforms, McCray felt it was important for young people to know how to communicate effectively in the video medium. After all, storytelling is a valuable tool no matter what your profession. And, what better place to teach it than in an academic setting like Princeton.

In 2007 and 2008, McCray returned to Princeton to teach a broadcast journalism module in Associate Professor Melissa Harris-Perry's Politics course, Introduction to African-American Politics. In lieu of taking the final exam, students were given the option of working on video journalism projects that included a political profile, a news feature, or a film festival. Over fifty students participated in the video project out of eighty-three registered in the popular Princeton course.

The objective of the project was to teach undergraduates the art and politics of visual storytelling, to analyze the politics of race and media through hands-on processes, to tie into new platforms of technological innovation that mark the political world as we now know it, and to use the concepts learned in class to create a lasting product that engages the skills and ideas of the course.

One of the students, Alexis Tucker, went on to win a Fulbright-mtvU Fellowship to produce a film in France. It was an expansion of her anthropology thesis on hip-hop culture after the 2005 French riots.

McCray has maintained a close working relationship with the former Princeton presidents Robert Goheen, Shirley Tilghman, and current president Christopher Eisgruber. Over the past twenty years, he has produced and directed seven film projects for Princeton (see: www.blacksatprinceton.com).

After successful appointments at Princeton and Long Island Universities where McCray taught broadcast journalism to undergraduates, he joined the faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism as an Adjunct Professor in 2002. He brought knowledge of print journalism from his years at Time Incorporated, broadcast journalism from his two decades at ABC News and technical expertise from his years shooting films for Media Genesis Productions.

McCray taught a variety of courses including Television Skills section of Reporting and Writing 1 (formerly the core curriculum course), Introduction to TV Reporting and Writing (an all-day Saturday course for part-time students) and Television News Magazine Workshop. The objectives of these courses are to teach students to tell stories through pictures, to develop clear, concise writing styles and to understand the importance of thorough, accurate reporting. These courses also show students how to produce, write, shoot and edit broadcast news and news magazine stories.

McCray was able to bring examples of the daily challenges of working at World News Tonight into the classroom to highlight the complexities of this demanding and fast-paced medium. He was also able to call upon members of the ABC News staff to appear in class to enlighten and inspire the next generation of journalists. Over the past twelve years, McCray has helped hundreds of young journalist develop the skills and talent to enter media enterprises across the country and around the world.

Melvin McCray created the Digital Media Training Program in Harlem (DMTPH) in the spring of 2013 and serves as the director. The program teaches photography, video production, and journalism to high school students. In October 2016, A Girls’ Right To An Education won an Honorable Mention at the third annual White House Student Film Festival. This marks the third win in three years for the Digital Media Training Program students in Harlem (DMTPH) and their second trip to the White House.

Six student filmmakers from A. Philip Randolph Campus High School, who made the 3-minute film, traveled to Washington, D.C., and was honored at the festivities. The ceremony was held at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Sunday, October 2, 2016, and was followed the next day by film screenings, panel discussions, and exhibits at the South By South Lawn Festival on the south lawn of the White House. The highlight was a photo with President Barack Obama.

The film examines the issue of girls’ education around the world. The result was a 3-minute film that profiles three non-profit groups that are working to better the lives of girls: Pathfinders Justice Initiative, Girl Be Heard, and She’s the First. Pathfinders Justice Initiative (http://pathfindersji.org) fights injustice against women and girls in the developing world with a focus on combatting human trafficking. Girl Be Heard (http://girlbeheard.org) is a nonprofit theatre company that highlights global issues affecting girls by empowering young women to tell their stories. She’s the First (https://shesthefirst.org) provides scholarships to girls in low-income countries, fostering first-generation high school graduates and cultivating the next generation of global leaders.

In March of 2015, the DMTPH won the 2nd Annual White House Student Film Festival for their film, Mentoring in Harlem. McCray took five of his students to the White House ceremony hosted by President Barack Obama. They were among fifteen winners out of 1,500 entries from around the country who created 3-minute films that focused on mentoring and community service. The act of creating a film and screening it at the White House was a great achievement, but for these students, the implications for their self-confidence and pride in their community go far beyond that one occasion.

McCray founded the DMTPH after observing young black and Latino students consuming media in the form of movies, music, video games, and file-sharing platforms. Still, very few were engaged in creating media. McCray set out to train young people to create media and tell their own stories. He wanted to take the storytelling skills that he was teaching graduate students at Columbia Journalism School and teach them to a younger generation, specifically children in the nearby Harlem community. However, McCray decided he would not teach these skills in a vacuum. His goal was to create a program that celebrated the rich and colorful history of Harlem and, at the same time, assemble a valuable body of work. With this in mind, the Harlem Through My Eyes History Project was born.

The project seeks to gather stories about the Harlem community told by the people who live and work there. Over the past two years, McCray and the Digital Media Training Program students have interviewed over 50 people. His intergenerational style of interviewing, using high school students as interviewers, has produced a unique and insightful archive of Harlem stories.

The DMTPH has expanded its training program to include 3D animation, 3D printing, and a hands-on engineering course called Green Ready Alternative Energy Program (GRAEP). The GRAEP classes instruct students to build wind turbines, fuel cells, and solar cars while teaching them the mathematics and physics to make them run. The program has generated excitement and enthusiasm for science, technology, and engineering among black and Latino children.

McCray was the recipient of the 2015 Snowy Egret Award for Youth Engagement on October 3. He received the award in honor of his commitment to the education of underserved populations through his work as director of the Digital Media Training Program in Harlem, which has opened opportunities for youth to expand their horizons. The Eastern Queens Alliance gave the award to a coalition of civic associations, neighborhood organizations, businesses, clergy, and residents in Queens, New York.

In 2008, McCray was awarded the Alumni Council Award for Service to Princeton University. The award recognizes outstanding service contributions to Princeton by any member of the Princeton family, emphasizing those who serve significantly but inconspicuously.

In 1997, McCray, along with Calvin Norman, produced the documentary Looking Back: Reflections of Black Princeton Alumni, which was the winner of the Bronze Medal from the Association for the Advancement of Education. The program examined the history of African American students at the university from 1747 to 1997 for Princeton’s 250th Anniversary. It was the first of seven films he produced, directed, and edited for Princeton over the years (see: www.blacksatprinceton.com).

In addition, McCray served as Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton in 1999 and has served on the Advisory Board of the Princeton Alumni Weekly Magazine for over six years. He was also awarded the Alumni Service Award from the Association of Black Princeton Alumni in 1997.

While working as a staff reporter at Money Magazine by day and studying documentary filmmaking at the New School at night, McCray reached a crossroads in the spring of 1978. He began producing a documentary on black male-female relationships after seeing the Broadway play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange. His passion for the subject and his film were so overwhelming that McCray left Money Magazine to pursue his dream.

Nine months later, just as his money was running out, he received a Western Union Mailgram from George Stevens Jr., founder of the American Film Institute. “I am delighted to tell you that you have been chosen for support under the American Film Institute’s Independent Filmmaker Program. The fact that you were selected from among 1,300 applicants best expresses our high regard for you and your project.” The award came with a cash prize of $10,000 to pursue his documentary film project. The American Film Institute Award was life-changing.   

Celebrating the very best in the George Polk Awards

Put On Your Mask

We were happy to participate in the call from Governor Andrew Cuomo to create a “Wear a Mask” Public Service Announcement. Thanks to Stephen Thompson of Brooklyn’s Marcus Garvey Studios for the great music tracks created by Abayomi K. Sogo. We appreciate the efforts of Khadim Diop for the vocals. The video was produced, directed, and edited by Melvin McCray. The PSA was a production of Media Genesis Solutions.

Listen to the Science

COVID-19 fatalities continue to increase in the Black community despite the widespread availability of vaccines that substantially reduce the probability of hospitalization and death for those infected. Three years into the pandemic, vaccine hesitancy is still causing harm. In the summer of 2023, Media Genesis Solutions created a PSA that celebrates Black scientists and their breakthroughs in the biomedical field. This program encourages African Americans to listen to the science and get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Educational Rights Transparency Act

Hundreds of thousands of families have been left in the dark regarding the specific educational opportunities that the billion-dollar New York State Education Budget is supposed to pay for as required by state education law (the state constitution, state statutes, and the regulations of the commissioner of education). Information is power, but some communities and families have far less access to education-related information and the power it provides. To correct this imbalance, a coalition of educators and non-profits have banded together to pass the Educational Rights Transparency Act.

Photography Book