Overview

• Her family and NBC Chicago confirmed that Ferguson died Friday at age 75 while in home hospice care.
• She broke barriers in 1987 by joining WMAQ-Channel 5 as the first African American woman investigative reporter in Chicago and retired from the station in 2008.
• Ferguson’s investigations earned her a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award and seven Chicago Emmy Awards.
• Her reporting prompted congressional hearings that led to rewritten strip-search protocols at O’Hare International Airport and helped secure the exoneration of Tyrone Hood.
• She co-founded the Chicago chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and continued public service after retirement as a campaign spokeswoman and congressional press secretary.