From Tupac to ‘Hollywood Live’: Journalist returns home for free event

MUSKEGON, Mich. (WOOD) — Award-winning television and radio host Tanya Hart is coming home to Muskegon for an event put on by the Friends of Hackley Public Library.

The free Charles H. Hackley Distinguished Lecture event will take place at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 30 at the Greater Muskegon Woman’s Club, located at 280 W. Webster Ave. Hackley Public Library Director Joe Zappacosta said people will be invited for a reception afterward at the library.

It’s the 42nd annual iteration of the lecture event, which first began in 1981 to honor Charles Hackley around Charles Hackley day on May 25. Each year, the Friends of Hackley Public Library invite someone from the area who went on to do significant things in their field.

“We try to keep it new and fresh each year,” he said. “It’s supposed to appeal to the whole community too. We want to have something that people are going to come out to.”

He said that Hart had been on the list for potential speakers for many years. Hart will be sharing the story of her life in her presentation, called “Hackley to Hollywood: Tanya Hart’s Journey to Inclusion,” and will talk about why diversity and inclusion is important.

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Hart’s story began in Muskegon, where she grew up in 50s and 60s. She looks back on her time there fondly, remembering participating in winter sports and beach parties. Her family would put up a big ice skating rink each winter — “with lights and the whole 9 yards,” she said — and invited the neighborhood over to skate.

“I always tell people, I said, ‘Oh if you’ve never been to Muskegon, Michigan, you have no idea,'” she said. “The beaches there … if you go a little bit further north, it’s like just somewhere out of a novel. Something looks like the Sahara with water. So yeah, it wasn’t a bad time at all.”

She grew up on Marquette Avenue and graduated from Orchard View High School before going on to Michigan State University.

There, her career in media started on April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. When she heard of the assassination, her first thought was to go to WKAR, the radio station on campus that was mostly a commercial station at the time.

“MLK was assassinated,” Hart said. “Literally a voice came to me and said ‘Go to the radio station.'”

She called up two of her friends and told them they had to do something. She said she knew the campus was “going to go into an uproar,” and she could already hear it outside her dorm room in Akers Hall.

The trio grabbed three albums, two of which were James Brown albums, called up a friend of hers that worked at the radio station and headed for WKAR.

“We called him and we told him, ‘This is what we’re going to do, so call somebody and let them know we’re coming,'” she recalled. “We showed up and they put us on the air. It was amazing. We just started playing music and talking to people and telling everybody, just calm down and it was going to be OK.”

That day started the Taking Care of Business Show, which lasted even after she left campus, spanning more than four decades.

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She went on to have a prolific career, working at WBZ-TV in Boston for eleven years, working as a correspondent and alternate host of “The Gossip Show” with E! Entertainment and working as the entertainment correspondent for the KACE-FM morning show.

From 1990 to 1992, she worked as the host and senior producer of “Live from LA with Tanya Hart” with Black Entertainment Television. It was during that time that she interviewed Tupac, an interview that she said carried her career.

It was the first televised interview with the rapper, which was later used in the Oscar-nominated “Tupac: Resurrection.” People still watch the interview more than two decades later, she said, and it’s taken on a life of its own.

After the interview, the two became friends. Hart said she tried to encourage him not to hang out with Marion “Suge Knight,” who he was with when he died.

“I even invited him to church. … We went to kind of a mega church and there was like, this whole big meeting, and they always have a lot of celebrities in our church,” she said. “They didn’t come. But they went to Vegas.”

There’s been nobody like him since, she said.

“He was brilliant,” she said. “He left us way too soon, and I often think about what would he be doing now. I personally think he would have been a politician and by now, working on becoming a senior statesman.”

Hart now hosts “Hollywood Live with Tanya Hart,” and has her own company, Tanya Hart Communications.

She has won four Emmy awards, received the Lifetime Achievement Gold Circle Award from the National Television Academy and was nominated for an Oscar, among several other awards and recognitions.

For young people in Muskegon looking to start their career, especially a career in the media, she had some great advice.

“I would suggest to young people, create a community around whatever your interest is. Get other people to work with you, because this business is always a collaboration. You cannot really do things on your own,” she said. “That’s what we did when we were coming along in the TV business. We were lucky enough to get in with a group of people that had the same interest and then we did television or radio or whatever, films, but you do need that community.”

She also recommended embracing new technology, like AI, and figuring out how to make it work for you. Hart also said it’s important to think ahead — “If you don’t think ahead, you’re already behind,” she said — and to find your purpose.

“Love what you do. You got to be passionate, as long as you find your passion,” she said. “Your purpose is extremely important. Everybody has a purpose in life. Many people find it; Unfortunately, many don’t.”

Zappacosta with the Hackley Public Library said they’re hoping to fill the house for Hart’s event.

“I’m very excited to come home. I’m so grateful to Joe (Zappacosta) and his staff for making this happen,” Hart said. “We want to have fun and we want to bring something new, and some good information. … My motto has always been to enlighten, inform and entertain and inspire.”

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