Stephen Henderson

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
Host of Created Equal

Stephen Henderson is a native Detroiter who has nearly 30 years of journalism experience as a writer and editor, and a deep-rooted connection with the city that birthed him.

A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Henderson has also won more than two dozen other national awards for writing and editing. He was honored in 2014 as Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists.

He is a 1992 graduate of the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and is a former editorial page editor of the school's 130-year-old daily newspaper, The Michigan Daily.

Henderson’s wide-ranging career includes stints at the Chicago Tribune, where he was part of the team that built ChicagoTribune.com, at the Knight Ridder Washington bureau, where he covered the five terms at the U.S. Supreme Court, and at the Baltimore Sun, where his editorials won clemency in 2000 for a death row prisoner. Henderson also spent more than a decade at the Detroit Free Press, where he was the first African American to lead the paper’s editorial page and its first black Pulitzer winner.

Henderson is a founder of BridgeDetroit, a non-profit news organization that prioritizes issues that Detroiters themselves identify as critical. And Henderson is the founder of The Tuxedo Project, a literary arts and community center located in the home where Henderson’s family lived when he was born.

He hosts the daily radio show Created Equal, on WDET 101.9FM, Detroit’s public radio station, and two weekly shows on Detroit Public Television. He is a founder and executive advisor to BridgeDetroit, a non-profit news and engagement organization. 

Henderson has a long-standing interest in education and actively engages with education leaders in the city and state to advance educational equity and justice, especially for historically minoritized children, youth, and families.