geographical biography
St. Louis, Missouri - Keith was born at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis on August 28, 1965. He grew up in Florissant, Missouri and attended Charbonier Elementary School, where he ran for his first election and became president of the Student Council. He also played on a Little League baseball team and in the Junior Football League. Keith attended Hazelwood West Junior High and High School. As a freshman in high school, he competed on the football team and wrestling team. His parents left St. Louis at the end of his freshman year in high school in 1980. Keith still has family in St. Louis and visits regularly.
Clearwater, Florida - From 1980-1983, Keith attended Countryside High School in Clearwater, Florida. He ran the 400 meter run and the mile relay on the Countryside Cougars varsity track team during his sophomore, junior and senior years. He also ran on the school's state-ranked cross country team for one season. Keith was feature editor of the Paw Print school newspaper, vice president of the student government in his junior year, and then president of the student government in his senior year. As chairman of the Pinellas County Students Rights & Responsibilities Committee, Keith represented more than 80,000 students in the district as a liaison to the school board. Keith wrote a guest column in the local newspaper, the Clearwater/St. Petersburg Times, and served as the youngest member of the Safety Harbor Parks and Recreation Board. Under the tutelage of debate coach and teacher Wilma Splawn, Keith matured into a successful speaker and debater and won numerous awards throughout the state. He competed in Student Congress and the Model United Nations and served as a Washington "intern" for U.S. Congressman Bill McCollum. He graduated from Countryside High School in June 1983.
Hanover, New Hampshire - From August 1983 to June 1987, Keith attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. As a freshman, he wrote for The Dartmouth daily newspaper, the oldest college newspaper in America. He became editor-in-chief of the newspaper in his junior year and served as president of the board of the company that owned the newspaper. During his tenure as editor, the college exploded into protest and controversy and catapulted Keith into the national spotlight, including a 1986 article in the New York Times. A talented athlete, Keith ran the 400 meter run, 500 meter run and the mile relay on the varsity track team and competed in the NCAA championships in 1985. He held the school record in the 500 meter run for over a decade after he graduated. He competed with world-class athletes at the Penn Relays, Florida Relays and the Millrose Games and traveled to England to compete against Oxford University and Cambridge University. He also ran on the distance medley relay team that was ranked third in the nation. Keith was a member of the Casque & Gauntlet Senior Society and the Palaeopitus Senior Honor Society. In 1984, Keith won the William S. Churchill Prize given by the dean of freshman to the outstanding freshman man. In 1987, Keith was honored to receive the prestigious Barrett Cup, given by the dean of the college to the most distinguished student in each graduating class. Keith majored in government and graduated from Dartmouth in June 1987.
Granada, Spain - Keith studied abroad at the Universidad de Granada in Granada, Spain in 1985. Fluent in Spanish, he traveled through Spain, Portugal and Morocco.
Boston, Massachusetts - After graduating from college in June 1987, Keith joined the Mike Dukakis for President campaign at its national headquarters in Boston. As a press aide for the campaign, he wrote press releases, sent campaign entries to the Hotline and worked with the media. He left the headquarters in January 1988 to work on the campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire. Keith served as state press secretary in Ohio and Georgia for their respective state primaries. Following the 1988 Democratic National Convention, Keith spent the final months of the campaign traveling with Governor Dukakis as a press aide on his campaign plane. Keith left Boston in November 1988 at the end of the campaign.
Atlanta, Georgia - In the spring of 1988, Keith served as Georgia state press secretary for the 1988 Dukakis for President campaign. After the campaign, he taught 8th grade social studies and 10th grade English at Lithonia High School in Lithonia, Georgia. He lived in Stone Mountain, Georgia from 1988 to 1989. He returned to Atlanta years later as an honorary grand marshal for the annual Martin Luther King Day Parade, led by Coretta Scott King.
Cambridge, Massachusetts - Keith entered Harvard Law School in August 1989 and became a general editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. He was a campus leader in the Coalition for Civil Rights, a student-led movement for faculty diversity, in which he organized campus demonstrations, participated in an occupation of the dean's office and served as a spokesman for the coalition. He also served as a plaintiff in a groundbreaking faculty discrimination lawsuit against Harvard and argued part of the case himself in Massachusetts Superior Court. The case was eventually decided by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Keith "came out" in 1991 and wrote an essay about the experience that later became the basis for his first book. He graduated from Harvard in June 1992.
San Francisco, California - Keith spent the summer of 1991 working for a major law firm in San Francisco. After graduating from Harvard in 1992, he returned to San Francisco to become an associate in the firm but gave up the job and its high-paying salary to join the Clinton/Gore campaign instead.
Little Rock, Arkansas - Keith served as midwest press director for the 1992 Clinton/Gore campaign in Little Rock. In that capacity, he coordinated media activities and supervised press secretaries in 7 midwestern states. He also took part in daily meetings in the famed "war room."
Washington, D.C. - When Bill Clinton was elected president, Keith moved to Washington to serve on the presidential inaugural committee. In December 1992, incoming White House communications director George Stephanopoulos asked Keith to join the new White House communications team, and Keith was appointed special assistant to the president and director of news analysis. The highest ranking openly gay person in the White House, he helped organize and participated in the historic first-ever meeting between a U.S. president and leaders of the gay and lesbian community, which took place in April 1993. He was later promoted to director of specialty media. Keith left the White House in January 1995 to write his first book, One More River to Cross. In September 1995, Keith was selected as executive director of the National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum, a position he held until February 1998. In that capacity, he led a historic contingent in the 1995 Million Man March, appeared on numerous national television programs and traveled to Zimbabwe on a 1997 presidential delegation with Rev. Jesse Jackson and Coretta Scott King. Afterwards, Keith wrote his second book, Respecting the Soul, which was published in 1999. From 1999 to 2001, Keith taught political science at American University, where in the spring of 2000 he received an award from the School of Public Affairs as the outstanding adjunct professor of the year.
Los Angeles, California - From 1995 to 1998, Keith worked for the National Black Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum in Los Angeles. He maintained his residence in Washington during this time, but traveled extensively between the two coasts.
New York, New York - Keith moved to New York City in June 2001. There he launched his own website (keithboykin.com), founded the National Black Justice Coalition and announced his campaign for the Showtime television series, American Candidate.
In 2006, Keith began hosting the BET J television series My Two Cents and in 2007 he became a frequent political commentator on CNN. He is now working on his fourth book, which he plans to complete in 2008.
