Charlayne Hunter Gault, CNN’s African Bureau Chief and Correspondent, urged Sacramento State students and the community to appeal to the media for more U.S. news coverage of Africa.

The first woman news anchor for PBS’s “McNeil/Lehrer Report,” lectured Thursday evening in the University Union Ballroom stressing the need for citizens to speak out in an effort to end the misconception that the U.S. is not interested in news coverage of Africa.

“We need to get more news from Africa to the U.S.,” Hunter Gault told her audience which consisted of Sac State students, faculty, and community members.

Hunter Gault spoke of the impoverished continent and told audience members that even a simple donation of books to African schools would be a significant contribution to the education of African children.

“Africa needs all of you in one way or another, there are children who can’t read because they don’t have books?they have the commitment, the will, everything they need except the books,” Hunter Gault told the crowd.

Born in 1942 in South Carolina, Hunter Gault grew up in the segregated South and in 1961 she became one of the first two black students to attend the University of Georgia.

Hunter Gault’s entrance into the university was anything but hospitable. Her second night on the University of Georgia campus, protesters gathered outside of her dorm room throwing bricks and bottles at the window.

“I lived in a world of fantasy shared by my brief trek to the movies on Saturdays where my favorites were those that took me out of the segregated little movie theater on the side street in Covington, Georgia, and to a part of the world away from there where the good guys always triumphed,” said Hunter Gault of her childhood experiences.

Despite the rainy weather last Thursday night, a crowd of approximately 120 people attended the event, which was sponsored by Sac State’s Multicultural Center, UNIQUE Programs and the Women’s Resource Center.

Hunter Gault made light of the stormy weather as she told the audience, “In Africa, the rain is a sign of good luck and good blessing?when I got off the plane and it started to rain, I thought, ‘Oh we’re gonna have fun tonight.'”

The university has tried for seven years to arrange a speaking event with Hunter Gault. This year, UNIQUE Program Advisor Dean Sorenson pulled the event together for Sac State students, faculty, and the general community.

Hunter Gault is author of “In My Place,” a memoir of her experiences at the University of Georgia.

She has received two Emmy Awards, and her work has been published in The New York Times, Essence and Vogue magazine.