Black Women in the Media

Alia Blackburn started at WTHI-TV in November 2013. She is currently the weekend anchor and reporter for the station. During her time at News 10, Alia has covered a variety of stories that have impacted the Wabash Valley. A few of her favorites include covering the 2016 presidential election, President Donald Trump's rally in Terre Haute, as well as interviewing former candidate Bernie Sanders. Alia graduated from Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. with bachelor's degrees in both telecommunications and journalism. She is from Indianapolis, Ind. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha.

Women’s Equality Day commemorates the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, two simple sentences, which gave all women the right to vote in all elections, two simple sentences that represented 72 years of struggle and activism. Women’s Equality Day has been proclaimed by all Presidents since Richard Nixon. In 1973, Representative Bella Abzug (Dem. NY) and her co-sponsors, including Indiana Senator, Birch Bayh, were able to have passed a House Joint Resolution (first introduced in 1971) proclaiming August 26 as the day to celebrate this historic event, right in the middle of the attempt to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. On-campus programming, spearheaded by Gender Studies, focuses not just on women and voting but also equal rights covering a wide range of topics, both historical and current. During 2018, programming is highlighting the suffrage and voting rights of African-American women as well as Hoosier suffragists.