During this time, Bradley also anchored the Sunday night broadcast of the CBS Evening News, a position he held until 1981.

He covered a wide range of topics, including the rescue of Vietnamese refugees, segregation in the United States, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

[1] His parents divorced when he was young and he was raised in a poor household by his mother, Gladys Gaston Bradley, and spent summers with his father, Edward Sr., in Detroit.

[15] Following Carter's victory, Bradley became CBS's first African American White House correspondent, a position he held from 1976 to 1978.

[3] Also in 1976, Bradley began anchoring the Sunday night broadcasts of the CBS Evening News, holding the post until 1981.

[1] "The Boat People" also earned Bradley an Edward Murrow Award, a duPont citation, and a commendation from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

The documentary detailed segregation in the United States and how the treatment of African Americans in the U.S. had changed since Brown v. Board of Education.

According to producer Don Hewitt, Bradley's "calm, cool, and collected" reporting style was the right fit for the program.

[19][20] In his first decade on 60 Minutes, Bradley reported numerous high-profile stories on a variety of topics, including with Lena Horne, convicted criminal and author Jack Henry Abbott, and on schizophrenia.

[23] Bradley repeatedly turned down offers to anchor the CBS Evening News in the late 1980s, preferring instead to continue working on 60 Minutes.

[24] His reporting in the 1990s included such topics as Chinese forced labor camps, Russian military installations, and the effects of nuclear weapons testing near Semey, Kazakhstan.

[18] Throughout the 2000s until his death in 2006, Bradley continued to cover a variety of topics, including the AIDS epidemic in Africa, sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, and the 1955 murder of Emmett Till.

Scientists with the American Society of Toxiocology noted a lack of scientific evidence in Bradley's report and the United States Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration issued a joint statement 18 days after Bradley's story aired, declaring apples safe to eat.

[32] Bradley was diagnosed with lymphocytic leukemia in his later years, keeping the illness secret from many, including colleagues such as Wallace.

[14] His health rapidly declined after contracting an infection, but Bradley continued to work, saying that he preferred to die "with [his] boots on".

[25] Bradley filed 20 stories in his final year with 60 Minutes, conducting his last interviews with members of the Duke University lacrosse team accused of rape weeks before his death.

Among the attendees were the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, musicians Jimmy Buffett and Wynton Marsalis, journalists Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault, and former U.S. president Bill Clinton.

[20][37] Broadcast on October 15, 2006, the 60 Minutes edition that had Bradley's interview with the Duke lacrosse players had nearly 17 million viewers.

[40] Matt Zoller Seitz, writing for Slant Magazine, said Bradley forced audiences and the television news industry to "accept him on his own terms" and that he "annihilate[d] received wisdom about what it meant to be a professional journalist, a black man and an American".

[41] In 1994, Bradley and the Radio Television News Directors Association Foundation started a scholarship program in his name for journalists of color.