Vernon Jarrett was one of the nation's most prominent commentators on race relations and African American history. Jarrett began his journalism career at the Chicago Defender during the 1940s and later worked for the Associated Negro Press before making the transition to radio in 1948. For the next three years, Jarrett and composer Oscar Brown, Jr. produced Negro Newsfront, the nation's first daily radio newscast created by African Americans.

In 1970, Jarrett became the first African American syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He used his editorial voice as a forum for commentary on the social and economic trends affecting African Americans and the global concerns of pan-African politics. During this period, Jarrett served as host on Chicago's WLS-ABC TV, where he produced nearly 2,000 television broadcasts. In 1983, Jarrett left the Tribune and began writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, where he continued his tradition of political and social commentary, always grounded in the African American experience.

In 1977, Jarrett created the NAACP-sponsored ACT-SO program. An acronym for Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological, and Scientific Olympics, ACT-SO is designed as an award ceremony for exceptional African American students nationwide. Through the program, more than $1 million in computers, scholarships and books has been awarded to top-ranking students, honored each year during ACT-SO's national television special. To date, hundreds of students across the United States have participated in the annual event.

In recent years, Jarrett became a columnist for the New York Times' New American News Syndicate and his social commentary was heard during The Jarrett Journal, a news broadcast on WVON-AM, Chicago's only African American-owned radio station. He also served as a member of the editorial board of the NAACP's ninety-year-old Crisis Magazine, which was created by W.E.B. DuBois. Jarrett's outstanding journalism earned him numerous honors and awards, including the first NAACP James Weldon Johnson Achievement Award and his 1998 induction into the National Literary Hall of Fame at the University of Chicago's Gwendolyn Brooks Center.

Jarrett passed away on May 23, 2004.