Robert Petty (November 26, 1940 – February 18, 2020) was an American television reporter and news anchor who spent nearly his entire career at

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

's WLS-TV, retiring after 31 years with the station in 2002. Petty was born in

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

. After graduating from

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...

in 1970, he became a general assignment reporter at WLS in 1971, becoming one of the station's first black reporters. By the late 1970s, he was an anchor for the station's ''Saturday Weekend News.'' Petty received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters at Governors State University in 2005 (adding a new title to his list of distinctions). This was the second Governors State degree Petty received from the university; he earned his master's degree in communications from the institution in 1979. In 1987, Petty was named as a William Benton Fellow at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. He was also inducted into the Hall of Fame at ASU's Cronkite School of Journalism in 2007. Petty died February 18, 2020, of lung cancer at age 79.

References

1940 births 2020 deaths Television anchors from Chicago American television reporters and correspondents African-American journalists Arizona State University alumni People from Memphis, Tennessee Deaths from lung cancer Deaths from cancer in Illinois 20th-century African-American people 21st-century African-American people {{US-journalist-1940s-stub