Cohen, Janet Langhart 1941- (Janet Langhart)

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Cohen, Janet Langhart 1941-
(Janet Langhart)

PERSONAL: Born December 22, 1941, in Indianapolis, IN; daughter of Floyd Stamps (a Baptist minister) and Louise Gillenwaters (a hospital ward secretary); married Tony Langhart, 1968 (divorced, 1968); married Robert Kistner (a physician), 1978 (divorced, 1989); married William Cohen (a politician), February 14, 1996. Education: Attended Butler University and Indiana University. Politics: Democrat.

ADDRESSES: Home—Washington, DC. Office—Langhart Communications, 701 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Suite 1023, Washington, DC 20004. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Model, journalist, and media consultant. Ebony Fashion Fair Model; has appeared on covers of Boston, Boston Women, Encore, Flair, and Jet. WISH-TV, Indianapolis, IN, television reporter; WBBM-TV, Chicago, IL, weathercaster, late 1960s; WCVB-TV, Boston, MA, Good Day cohost, 1974-78; affiliated with National Broadcasting Company (NBC) American Alive, beginning 1978; New England's Good Day, cohost, 1981-85; nationally syndicated You Asked for It, overseas correspondent, 1985-86; American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (ABC), Home Show guest host, 1990; Entertainment Tonight, correspondent, 1991, 2001; Black Entertainment Television, America's Black Forum cohost, 1991-96; Personal Diary with Janet Langhart, host, 1993-94; and On Capital Hill with Janet Langhart, host, 1995-96. Assistant press secretary in Michael Dukakis's 1988 presidential campaign; Media-Wise, partner, 1995-; Invest America, creator and developer, 1996-; Langhart Communications, Washington, D.C., founder and CEO, 1996-; Rowand and Blewitt (crisis communications firm), staff member beginning 2000.

Former and current member of board of directors for corporate and nonprofit organizations, including Friends of National Arboretum and United Negro College Fund; affiliated with Digital Equipment Corporation and US News and World Report; Advocate for military troops stationed overseas. Judge of Miss America pageants; spokesperson for Avon Cosmetics. Actress, including (as self) Blind Ambition (television film), Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. (CBS); and Medium Cool.

AWARDS, HONORS: Winner of beauty pageants; Outstanding Young Leader Award, Boston's Junior Chamber of Commerce; Israel Cultural Award; Casper Award, City of Indianapolis; Emmy nomination, for writing, producing, and hosting Janet's Special People.

WRITINGS:

(With Alexander Kopelman) From Rage to Reason: My Life in Two Americas, Kensington (New York, NY), 2004.

Also columnist, Boston Herald, 1986-88.

SIDELIGHTS: Born in a housing project in a segregated section of Indianapolis, Janet Langhart Cohen saw the oppression and poverty of African Americans first hand. As a beauty pageant winner, Boston television reporter, and wife of a white U.S. senator who became secretary of defense, she also saw the other side of America's racial divide. In From Rage to Reason: My Life in Two Americas she recounts her experiences with the civil rights movement, the promise of equality, and the continuing impact of racism from a truly unusual perspective.

Born Janet Floyd in a charity hospital to a poor mother with a ninth-grade education and a largely absentee father, Langhart Cohen might have ended up another welfare statistic with an early pregnancy and no high school degree, but her mother's ambition and her own natural beauty and intelligence offered her a way out. After two years at Butler University she won several beauty pageants and soon entered into a successful modeling career. At the same time, she began to take a strong interest in the civil rights battles raging around the country, meeting Martin Luther King, Jr. and Muhammad Ali among other prominent political and cultural figures. In the wake of Dr. King's assassination, she married Tony Langhart, another ardent civil rights supporter, as a kind of solace to the tragedy, but the marriage lasted less than a year. She decided to keep the name Langhart, however.

Langhart Cohen also began a career in television, finding success in Chicago before moving to Boston at the height of that city's heated controversy over school busing that pitted white parents against black children in ugly demonstrations. As cohost of Good Day, a local news program, Langhart Cohen had a front-row seat and also a platform. Appalled by the contrast between Boston's reputation as the birthplace of liberty and the refusal of many whites to accept black equality, she began to ask pointed questions of her viewers. Still, her combination of frankness and glamour won admiration across the board, and she became a local celebrity. She also remarried, to gynecologist Robert Kistner, but they parted amicably in 1989, and Kistner committed suicide a year later.

Shortly thereafter, Langhart Cohen received a condolence call from a politician she had first interviewed in the 1970s, Republican Senator William Cohen. Despite their different outlooks, the two grew closer, began dating, and in 1996 were married. When Cohen was chosen to be President Bill Clinton's secretary of defense shortly thereafter, they became the most prominent interracial couple in Washington.

Langhart Cohen's life is both the fulfillment of the American dream and also something of an anomaly, as she acknowledges throughout her memoir. As the editorial staff put it in the Black Issues Book Review, "It's a bumpy ride navigating her way through both black America and white America." She has seen both the possibilities and the terrible disappointments in America's long struggle toward racial justice. In her memoir, "Langhart-Cohen writes with soul and rage, love and pride, hope and clear-eyed honesty about the remarkable life she has lived," noted a Fort Lauderdale Westside Gazette reviewer.