Published on Show Me Mizzou Sept. 16, 2025
Story by Tony Rehagen, BA, BJ ’01
Linda Lockhart (BJ ’74), career journalist and pioneer of St. Louis’s Black press corps, was passionate about language. Throughout her 45-year career, she built a reputation for being exacting about grammar and clear communication.
The staff at the St. Louis American, where Lockhart was interim managing editor in 2021, put it this way in her obituary: “A stickler for straight-forward writing and AP style, she did not pass away or transition. She died on May 4, 2025, of complications associated with cancer. She was 72.”
“She could be firm about the right word and spelling,” says her daughter, Rachel Seward. “But it came from a place of love and care. She wanted to help everyone, and part of that was informing the citizenry, making sure everyone had
access to the truth.”
In 1970, Lockhart became the first Black student to graduate from Lutheran High School South in suburban St. Louis. She studied journalism at Mizzou on a full-ride scholarship from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where she began her career covering police and education.
Longtime Post-Dispatch colleague Margaret Wolf Freivogel remembers Lockhart as someone who loved being a journalist and thrived in collaborative work she believed in. “She was better than anyone I know at doing both things at the same time,” Freivogel says
Lockhart held editing jobs in Wisconsin and Minnesota before returning to St. Louis, where she worked at the Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis Beacon and St. Louis Public Radio. A founding force in the Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists, she welcomed new hires with a tour of the city. “She always wanted to bring people together,” Seward says, noting her dedication “to putting politics and personal feelings aside and helping everyone know the real story.”
Photojournalism is much more than pointing a camera and clicking a button. It’s about knowing when and where to be and placing oneself in the right position. Such intuition often involves patience — waiting as a moment unfolds. More than anything, it takes an eye, empathy and the ability to capture human emotion in the perfect shot that tells a story.
All those traits applied to William Greenblatt, BS Ed ’70, who died in December at age 70 because of complications from cancer.
Greenblatt perhaps was best known for his sports photography for United Press International. During a career spanning decades, he captured virtually every St. Louis team — the Cardinals, Blues and football Cardinals included — as well as countless Mizzou rosters and players. The first photographer inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, he also was recognized by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the National Football Hall of Fame.
But Greenblatt was more than a sports nut. At Mizzou, he studied education and music alongside journalism. He was a disc jockey at St. Louis classic rock powerhouse KSHE (94.7 FM) before shifting to photojournalism, which included shooting breaking news and government affairs. “He enjoys watching the democratic process, and he saw it all, the highs and lows,” former Missouri Gov. Bob Holden told the St. Louis Business Journal.
Greenblatt was also the official photographer for public agencies including multiple Missouri and Illinois governors and the St. Louis Fire Department. “When Bill entered a room,” Julius Hunter, former KMOV anchor and journalist, told the St. Louis American, “he made a point of not lighting up the room until his camera light flashed to bring us all closer to see important events and newsmakers in our city we might have otherwise missed. Bill will be missed.”
To read more articles like this, become a Mizzou Alumni Association member and receive MIZZOU magazine in your mailbox. Click here to join.
