There are very few journalists whose local work has made a national impact. But Eugene Kane, KLN ‘81, a retired columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, can count himself among them. The Eugene Albert Kane, Jr. Honorary Scholarship Fund was recently established at Klein College of Media and Communication to honor the late journalist’s legacy by giving back to future media professionals.

The scholarship fund was created by Edna Kane-Williams, Kane’s sister and the senior vice president for multicultural leadership at AARP, to provide assistance to an incoming freshman student with financial need who is enrolled at Klein and is a graduate of a public high school in the School District of Philadelphia. Watching her brother work tirelessly to complete his education gave Kane-Williams a firsthand look at the struggles of financial hardship for students in higher education.

“We need a rigorous press and media full of top, top talent and I think all journalism and media schools should be thinking of ways to expand their borders and make sure that they have voices from every part of the community as a part of their class makeup,” Kane-Williams says.

Kane, who passed away in April at 63 years old, grew up near Temple University’s North Philadelphia campus. He attended Temple part-time as a journalism major with a minor in Black studies while working full-time. During his senior year, he was a freelance writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, always keeping his goal of professional journalism in sight.

After graduating, Kane participated in the Maynard Institute Summer Program for Minority journalists and was placed at the Journal Sentinel upon completion of the program. In Milwaukee, he formed several long-lasting friendships with fellow journalists of color, including Kevin Merida, another graduate of the Summer Program for Minority Journalists and the current editor-in-chief of ESPN’s race, sports and culture platform The Undefeated. Merida, who remembers Kane as funny, courageous and insightful, was instrumental in the creation of Kane’s scholarship fund at Temple and used his professional connections at the university to help Kane-Williams set up the scholarship fund.

“It didn’t matter the last time I talked to Kane or he talked to me, we would pick it up just like it was yesterday we talked,” Merida says. “We had developed the kind of closeness that didn’t matter how often we saw each other or when we saw each other or when we talked to each other.”

Kane went on to become a Milwaukee fixture with his popular Journal Sentinel column “Raising Kane.” The column unapologetically challenged authority by examining race issues of local and national importance. He retired from the publication in 2012. 

“He had a voice, he established his voice. And he had values and a spirit and a fearlessness, which is something you need to write the kind of stuff he was writing,” Merida says.

“Raising Kane” received several journalism honors including a National Association of Black Journalists award for Best Commentary, two National Headliner awards for Best Local Column and a Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists for Best General Column. Kane was inducted into the Wisconsin Media Hall of Fame and the Milwaukee Press Club Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2017, Kane was recognized by the Wisconsin Black Media Association for their “Honoring Our Own” event at the Wisconsin Black Historical Society.

Kane-Williams is confident that the scholarship fund will help early-career media professionals develop their unique voices. Several donors in Kane’s adopted home of Milwaukee have already contributed to the fund which she believes “speaks volumes for how he lived his life and the impact he had on Milwaukee when he was writing there.” The outpouring of support has also helped her personally cope with Kane’s untimely death, saying “doing this helps me feel...really more at peace with the fact that he’s gone.”

But the process of training young journalists is ongoing, and Kane’s loved ones, including Merida, anticipate that even more generous donors will contribute to the fund. “I hope that as this scholarship gets developed...that we generate one thousand Eugene Kanes,” Merida says. “Because if we do that, everybody gets better.”

For more information on how to support the Eugene Albert Kane, Jr. Honorary Scholarship Fund please follow this link.