Tom Morgan III Passes Away

By Phill Wilson, Black AIDS Institute

Thomas Morgan III My holiday celebration was interrupted by the news of the death of my friend Tom Morgan on the morning of Christmas Eve.

Thomas Morgan was one of Black Journalism's shining stars. He was a former New York Times editor and a trailblazing ex-president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). He died Monday of an AIDS-related heart attack. He was 52.

Morgan lived for 20 years as an openly HIV-positive, gay man and worked in some of America's largest, most influential newsrooms. He was a reporter and editor at the Times, The Washington Post and the Miami Herald. From 1989 to 1991, he presided over one of NABJ's most explosive periods of growth and organization.

I met Tom in the mid eighties. At the time, he was the highest profiled African American living with AIDS.

Max Robinson and Arthur Ashe had both died by then, and Magic had not yet been infected. I remember going to Tom's house in Brooklyn to talk to him about how to get the media interested in AIDS in Black America.

He responded with cautious enthusiasm, opening up his rolodex and using his wealth of knowledge, influence and connections to connect with media movers and shakers. When we started the Black AIDS Institute in 1999, Tom again came to the rescue to help us craft our first report, "The Nia Plan", and participate in our first national Town Hall meeting.

In the years following his presidency, Morgan was a tireless advocate on behalf of fellow gay and HIV-positive journalists of color, both within NABJ and in the news industry at-large. And he always stepped forward to help all journalists learn to cover the HIV/AIDS epidemic smartly and compassionately. "I want members to know," he told the NABJ Journal in 1995, "that AIDS is a disease no different than things like breast cancer or prostate cancer. It is simply a disease. We are all mortal, and we will all die of something."

"He had the ability to walk into a room divided and help those who held opposing viewpoints find common ground," said NABJ President Barbara Ciara in a statement announcing Morgan's death.

Today, NABJ boasts an active LGBT Task Force that has a significant presence at national conventions and has repeatedly tackled the AIDS epidemic in its programming -- an achievement that would have been impossible without Morgan's leadership.

"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 marking Morgan's death Monday. "In a very real literal way, we are here thanks to him."

Morgan is survived by his long-time partner, Tom Ciano, in Brooklyn, N.Y. For more information about Morgan's life and career, see NABJ's statement and his obituary in Richard Prince's Dec. 24 Journalisms column.

http://www.maynardije.org/columns/dickprince/071224_prince-morgan/