Claude Cummings has been unanimously nominated by the NNPA Executive Committee to receive the NNPA 2025 National Leadership Award for outstanding leadership and achievement in service of communications workers around the nation.
The NNPA Board of Directors and all its 250 African American member publishers will honor Cummings on September 25, 2025, at the NNPA 2025 National Leadership Awards Reception, themed Saluting Excellence in Leadership.
The reception will be hosted at the Conrad Hilton Hotel, 950 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC.
Each year during the week of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual Legislative Conference (ALC), the NNPA national leadership award is presented to leaders who have received national recognition for their contributions benefiting the greater community in a specific field or industry.
The scope of Cummings’ extraordinary achievement becoming the president and leader of more than 700,000 communications workers is remarkable and appreciated by 50 million African Americans and others who cry out for equality and justice.
The Black Press is the premier and trusted voice of Black communities as its members report stories from the Black perspective and has done so for the past 198 years. Fast forward, the NNPA trade association for the Black Press is today a repository for Black history from the Black perspective that cannot be matched by any other media organization.
The NNPA daily curates African American news, entertainment, sports, education and public policy matters in all the U.S. major media markets, competing handily with AP, Reuters and other mainstream newswires, and having the most original content.
With 50 million weekly readers of Black newspapers and over 5 million viewers monthly on Black Press USA, NNPA social media platforms and NNPA livestreams combined, NNPA has become a trusted staple for Black legislators and others to deliver their messages to Black America.
The Communication Workers of America (CWA) was founded in 1938 at meetings in Chicago and New Orleans. First known as the National Federation of Telephone Workers, the union became the Communications Workers of America in 1947.
CWA got its start in the telephone industry, but today it represents workers in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada in the communications and information industries, as well as the news media, the airline industry, broadcast and cable television, public service, higher education, health care, manufacturing, high tech fields, and more.
Claude Cummings Jr. was elected president of the Communications Workers of America by delegates to the union’s 79th convention on July 10, 2023. Prior to his election as president, Cummings served as an at-large member of the CWA’s Executive Board, then as Vice President of CWA District 6, representing workers in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. He also led the Human Rights Department for the union.
Cummings began work at Southwestern Bell Telephone Company (now AT&T) in 1973 and worked as a Frame Attendant and Communications Technician, maintaining systems for NASA, among other corporate customers. Prior to his election to District 6 Vice President he was President of CWA Local 6222 representing more than 8,000 members, having served previously in other leadership positions in the local, including Vice President. Cummings was the first Black man elected to all of these positions.
