Keith Boykin

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Keith Boykin

Keith Boykin (born August 28, 1965) is a co-host of the BET TV talk show "My Two Cents." A former White House aide to President Clinton and a New York Times bestselling author of three books, Keith was raised in St. Louis, Missouri and attended Countryside High School in Clearwater, Florida, before graduating from Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School.

After graduating from Dartmouth in 1987, Boykin spent a year and a half working for the Michael Dukakis for President Campaign and then entered Harvard Law School, where he was a leader in the campus diversity movement and general editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. He received his J.D. from Harvard in 1992 and then joined the Clinton/Gore Campaign in Little Rock, Arkansas. After Bill Clinton's election, Boykin became a Special Assistant to the President and Director of Specialty Media. Once the highest-ranking openly gay person in the Clinton White House, Boykin helped to organize and participated in the nation's first meeting between gay and lesbian leaders and a U.S. President.

Boykin left the White House to write his first book, One More River to Cross: Black and Gay in America, published in 1996. His second book, Respecting the Soul, was published in 1999.

In 1997, President Clinton appointed Boykin to the U.S. presidential trade delegation to Zimbabwe, along with Rev. Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King and Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater. From 1999 to 2001, Boykin taught political science at American University in Washington, D.C.

[edit] Media Appearances

Boykin appeared on the Showtime television series American Candidate and has appeared on VH1, BET, CNN, Fox News, NPR, and numerous other television and radio programs, including The Montel Williams Show, The Dennis Miller Show, The Tom Joyner Morning Show, Tony Brown's Journal and Anderson Cooper 360°. He has been featured on the cover of several publications including A&U, Out and The Advocate, and he was selected as one of Out magazine's 100 most intriguing people of 2004. He has also been featured or quoted in articles in the New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Vibe and Jet magazine.

He has written for the Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, the St. Petersburg Times, The Advocate, Black Issues Book Review and The Crisis. His syndicated column appears in several newspapers across the country, including New York Blade, Washington Blade, Southern Voice and Houston Voice.

[edit] Recent Activity

In February 2006, Boykin became a co-host of the TV series "My Two Cents" on the BET J channel, a part of BET Networks. Boykin's most recent book, Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies and Denial in Black America, was published in February 2005 and released in paperback in February 2006. From December 2003 until April 2006, Boykin served as president of the board of the National Black Justice Coalition, a Washington-based civil rights organization dedicated to fighting racism and homophobia. He lives in New York with his life partner Nathan Hale Williams.