June Cross

June Cross photo

June Cross is a documentary television producer who teaches broadcast journalism and documentary at the Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.

June Cross won two Emmys and two duPont-Columbia Journalism awards for her work on such stories as the 1983 war in Grenada, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the peace-building mission in Haiti, and the Presidential Campaigns of 1980, 1984, and 1988.

However, she is best known for a 1996 documentary she produced for PBS’ Frontline about her own complicated family called Secret Daughter: a Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother who Gave Her Away, a film about race, sex, and Hollywood. She is the author of a memoir by the same name. June says: "After the documentary aired I received hundreds of letters, many asking how I felt about the upbringing I had received. My memoir, Secret Daughter is my attempt to describe those feelings. It is a book about the pain of being denied and the burden of carrying a secret. The strength of a strong black family and vibrant black community kept me sane, but for years the secret I carried undermined me professionally and personally, even as I graduated from Harvard, became a producer/correspondent for PBS’ NewsHour, and a staff producer for Frontline. Now the secret is out, and I’m ready to begin the next chapter of my life."

June worked as a staff producer for PBS’ Frontline from 1992-1999. She has also worked as a producer/correspondent for PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and as a producer for CBS News.

She recently completed Wilhemina’s War, about an African American grandmother struggles to help her granddaughter survive the health risks and social stigma of living with HIV. Wilhemina’s War premiered at DOC NYC screened at the Pan African Film Festival and aired on PBS in February 2016.

Cross received her B.A. from Harvard and has been a fellow at Carnegie-Mellon University’s School of Urban and Public Affairs, as well as at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Studies at Harvard. She became a professor at Columbia Journalism School in 2006 and founded the Documentary Program in 2009.

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1 Book by June Cross