How Jeremiah Wright got invited to the National Press Club

In an op-ed piece titled, "The Right Motive for the Wright Breakfast," published today in The Final Call, Dr. Barbara Reynolds defended her decision to invite Rev. Jeremiah Wright and explains why she invited the pastor to speak at the National Press Club. 
 
Reynolds, a member of the speakers' committee at the press club, said she began suggesting Wright as a speaker "about three years ago" after she met him at a conference and was impressed by his "powerful" message of social justice "to lift people up."

She said no one had been particularly interested in Wright when she had mentioned his name before, but when the recent controversy around Rev. Wright erupted, the president of the Press Club asked her if she could get him as a speaker.

An editorial board member at USA TODAY for 13 years, Reynolds says she was "delighted" that Rev. Wright could finally bring his social justice message to an international level. "That was my only motivation," she writes.

Responding to some of the criticism directed at her, Reynolds said she is not a Republican, nor a Clinton surrogate, and she is not part of a "nefarious plot" against Obama. 

Reynolds was criticized -- she says "attacked" -- by some observers at the time who noted that she was a supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton and suggested that she may have staged the event with Rev. Jeremiah Wright to embarrass Senator Barack Obama.

While she did not deny her support for Clinton, she also pointed out her disagreements with the New York senator in her op-ed piece. "Few have written that I also publicly criticized the senator for not firing Geraldine Ferraro when she insinuated that Sen. Obama was an 'affirmative action' presidential candidate," she wrote.

"Ironically, some of the same Black journalists who are criticizing me now as I continue to fight for inclusion and diversity, are there as a result of myself and others fighting the corporate media to hire them," Reynolds wrote.