An NBC affiliate station out of Central Texas is making history after debuting the first all-Black and all-female team of news anchors.
On Monday, May 2, KCEN introduced the official anchor lineup for Texas Today, which serves Temple, Waco, Killeen, and the surrounding areas. Consisting of Jasmine Caldwell, Taheshah Moise, and meteorologist Ashley Carter, the three women make up the station’s — and probably the nation’s —
first-ever all-Black, all-female news anchor team, My San Antonio reports.Late last month, Caldwell took to Twitter to share the historic news.
Growing up with dreams of being a news anchor, Caldwell never expected to see an all-Black team of anchors in her lifetime.
“Growing up, I always saw all-white news anchors,” Caldwell said. “I didn’t think that there would ever be Black newscasts.”
“I knew there was always room for one, but I didn’t think that I would see three African Americans — male or female — permanently, all at one time. No way.”
Since their debut, the ladies have gained steam and made headlines for their historical TV debut. It’s a bold statement for the network, which Caldwell said had a diversity issue when she joined the team five years ago.
“When I first came to KCEN in 2017, we did not have any African American anchors. “It was completely different,” Caldwell told KCEN.
It’s a dream come true for the ladies who can recall feelings of not being represented on the news they grew up watching.
“I just think back to when I was a young girl and I used to watch the news with my parents and I never saw anyone who looked like me,” Moise said. “If I did, they were outside reporting in the cold.”
“It didn’t hit me then that nobody really looked like me, like the people I was watching growing up,” Carter added. “But then as I started to do it, people started to point it out, how there was not a lot of women who are Black and do the weather.”
“It kind of added on the responsibility of, OK, I didn’t get to see it growing up, and now little girls in this area are going to see me when they wake up, and now it can become a reality.”
Jasmine Caldwell, Taheshah Moise, and Ashley Carter take the Texas Today airwaves Monday through Friday from 4:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m.