Charles Austin (journalist)
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Charles Austin (1944–2018) was an American journalist who worked for WBZ-TV from 1968 to 2000. He was one of the first African-Americans to appear on local news in Boston.
Austin was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on November 22, 1944.[1][2] He was the youngest of four children born to Marion Austin.[2] His father Charles Bray Austin of Montgomery, Alabama, came home from WWII with injuries which left him with severe brain trauma; he subsequently died in 1969 in a Veterans Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts without ever meeting his son. Charles graduated from Ayer High School in 1962 and attended the New England Conservatory of Music before dropping out to sing full-time. He opened for Bill Cosby at The Bitter End and sang on the same card as Nina Simone. In 1965, while performing in St. Thomas he met his future wife, Linda, a Upstate New York native who was on vacation.[1] The two married in 1967.[2] Austin was drafted into the United States Army during the Vietnam War and was stationed in North Carolina.[1]