Vern E. Smith formerly served as the Atlanta Bureau chief and as a national correspondent for Newsweek. As a principal reporter with Newsweek's Special Projects Unit, he contributed to four cover stories later published as books. One of the stories, “Charlie Co.: What Vietnam Did to Us,” won the 1981 National Magazine Award for Single Issue Topic. He also served as a principal reporter and blogger for the 2004 Voices of Civil Rights oral history project, which is permanently housed in the Library of Congress. His work has also appeared in Emerge, the London Sunday Times, Ebony, GEO, the Crisis magazine, Merian magazine, and the History Channel Magazine.