Keith Boykin

Keith Boykin was born on August 28, 1965, in St. Louis, Missouri. He spent his early years in Florissant, Missouri, where he developed an interest in government and leadership, participating in student government and sports. At age fifteen, he moved to Florida with his father. He continued his leadership activities, serving as student government president and newspaper editor at Countryside High School in Clearwater, Florida. He later matriculated at Dartmouth College in 1983, where he received the William S. Churchill Prize for outstanding freshman in 1984 and the Barrett Cup for the most distinguished member of his graduating class in 1987. After Dartmouth, he worked on Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign from 1987 to 1988 before attending Harvard Law School in 1989. While at Harvard, he edited the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review journal and participated in The Coalition for Civil Rights, joining a lawsuit against the law school for racial discrimination.

Following his graduation from Harvard in 1992, Boykin worked at a law firm in San Francisco before joining Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign as the Midwest Press Director. After Clinton’s victory, Boykin became a Special Assistant to the President in the Clinton White House, also serving as Director of News Analysis and later Director of Specialty Media. In April 1993, he helped arrange the first meeting between an acting U.S. president and representatives from the LGBTQ community. He left the White House in January 1995 to write his first book, “One More River to Cross: Black and Gay in America.” Later, his book “Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America” became a New York Times bestseller. In late 1995, he became the executive director of the National Black Gay and Lesbian Forum, an organization dedicated to the uplift of Black Gays and Lesbians, where he helped organize a contingent in the Million Man March and opened an office in Washington D.C..

From 1999 to 2001, Boykin taught Political Science as an adjunct professor at American University. In 2003, he co-founded the National Black Justice Coalition in New York City, an organization focused on ending racism, homophobia, and LGBTQ/SGL bias and stigma. In 2004, he made television history on the Showtime reality series “American Candidate” as one of the first openly black gay couples to appear on a reality show. From 2008 to 2016, Boykin was a contributor for CNBC, and from 2017 to 2022, he served as a CNN political commentator. He has also co-hosted BET Networks’ talk show “My Two Cents” and has worked as an associate producer for the film “Dirty Laundry.” He is a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and continues to write and speak on intersectional issues.