Keith Boykin
Keith Boykin, author of Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies and Denial in Black America, will speak at United Black Ellument on Wednesday. He is touring in support of his latest book, For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Still Not Enough: Coming of Age, Coming Out, and Coming Home.
Boykin is a CNBC contributor, a BET columnist and a New York Times best-selling author of four books.
Educated at Dartmouth and Harvard, Boykin attended law school with President Barack Obama and served in the White House as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton. In 1997, Clinton appointed him, along with Coretta Scott King and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, to the U.S. presidential trade delegation to Zimbabwe.
Boykin has been actively involved in progressive causes since he worked on his first congressional campaign while still a student in high school. He is a veteran of six political campaigns, including two presidential campaigns, and he was named one of the top instructors when he taught political science at American University in Washington.
In 2004, he starring in the Showtime TV series American Candidate and has since appeared on numerous national media programs, including Anderson Cooper 360, The O’Reilly Factor, The Tyra Banks Show, The Montel Williams Show, Judge Hatchett and The Tom Joyner Morning Show.
In 2000, he delivered a speech to 200,000 people at the Millennium March on Washington and spoke about the AIDS epidemic in front of 40,000 people in Chicago’s Soldier Field in July 2006.
Each of Boykin’s first three books has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. He won the Lambda Literary Award for his second book, Respecting The Soul, while his first book, One More River to Cross, is taught in colleges and universities throughout the country.
Boykin was an associate producer of the 2007 feature film Dirty Laundry.
Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Keith currently lives in New York City and Miami.
U-BE, a program of Resource Center Dallas, is at 3116 Commerce St., Suite C. May 15 at 7 p.m.
