Remembering Tom Morgan

By Keith Boykin, in race
Monday, December 24 2007, 10:14PM

I am sad to report today that my colleague Tom Morgan, a legendary journalist, has passed away. Tom was a native of St. Louis and during his career he served as a reporter and editor at the New York Times, Washington Post and Miami Herald. He came to my attention in the 1990s after he had become the first openly gay president of the National Association of Black Journalists. I did not know Tom well, but I admired and respected him immensely.

An attractive, well-built man with a serious journalistic pedigree, he left a strong impression on me the very first time we met. I interviewed Morgan for my first book, One More River To Cross, and he talked to me about the challenges of being openly gay in a leadership position in a major black institution. The experience of being a trailblazer was not entirely new to him. His great-great grandfather, Captain Charleston Hunt Tandy, led the fight against Jim Crow segregation on the streetcars of St. Louis. "I grew up understanding that there were people who put their lives on the line for the civil rights struggle," he said during our interview.

Morgan and another black student helped to integrate the Rittenour Public Schools in the St. Louis area in 1956 and 1957. Years later, my school, in the Hazelwood District, would compete against the Rittenour Schools in sports. I owe Morgan a debt of gratitude for that.

As reported in One More River To Cross, some NABJ members opposed Morgan's candidacy to be president of the black journalists organization because they felt he would harm NABJ's reputation. Morgan decided not to raise the issue of his sexual orientation and instead to allow his detractors to do so. "We made the strategic gamble that the whispering led by the opposition would become so negative that it would turn a lot of people off."

He was right, and in 1989, Morgan became NABJ's first openly gay president. He continued serving as a journalist for years, and retired from the New York Times in 1995. That was when I first met him. I only spoke to him a few times over the years. I think the last time was during the past summer. But every time I talked to him I felt I owed him a huge debt of gratitude for blazing the trail that allowed me to do what I do.

The National Association of Black Journalists now includes an LGBT Task Force with distinguished members like Newsweek editor Marcus Mabry and journalist/blogger Jasmyne Cannick. "When we talk about standing on the shoulders of those who came before us, we mean Tom," wrote Marcus Mabry, the task force's founding co-chair. "In a very real literal way, we are here thanks to him."

Tom lived with the HIV virus, which developed into full-blown AIDS, for 20 years. He suffered a heart attack on Sunday night and died Monday in Southampton, Massachusetts while visiting family for the holidays. Tom Morgan was 56 years old.

Funeral arrangements have yet to be made, but his partner, Thomas Ciano, of Brooklyn, sent word that contributions in Morgan's name would be welcome at Gay Men's Health Crisis.

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