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Wilbert Tatum
Wilbert Arnold "Bill" Tatum (January 23, 1933 – February 26, 2009) was an American newspaper executive, who variously served as the editor, publisher, chairman and chief executive officer of the New York Amsterdam News, a weekly newspaper serving the African-American community of New York City.
Tatum was born in a three-room shack in Durham, North Carolina, the 10th of 13 children, in 1933. He attended Durham's segregated schools, working during the summer in tobacco fields.
He majored in sociology at Lincoln University, the United States' first degree-granting historically black university. During the Korean War, he served in the United States Marine Corps as a drill instructor in Japan from 1951 until 1954. After completing his military service, he attended Yale University as a National Urban Fellow. Tatum was later awarded a master's degree from Occidental College, where he majored in urban studies.
Tatum spent 13 years working as a mayoral appointee in the government of New York City, during the John Lindsay and Abraham Beame administrations. While director of community relations at the New York City Department of Buildings, he spent a cold winter's night in 1967 in a Queens housing project that lacked heat, to publicize the circumstances of tenants there. He proposed a $6 billion "clothing stamp" program that would provide clothing for the poor nationwide while assisting the city's struggling garment industry. Another proposal would have replaced the site of the former Madison Square Garden with an indoor amusement park.
Through the mid-1980s, Tatum made money in real estate, purchasing and renovating abandoned or neglected buildings that were reconstructed and repaired using unskilled ex-offenders and political refugee laborers.
Tatum was part of a group that purchased the New York Amsterdam News newspaper in 1971, which included investors such as former New York State Comptroller H. Carl McCall and Manhattan Borough President Percy E. Sutton. By the mid-1980s, Tatum had invested more than $400 thousand in the publication, most of it from bank loans using his real estate holdings as collateral. He acquired control of the paper in 1983 and became the paper's sole owner in 1996 after acquiring the stake of the last independent shareholder.
During his 25 years with the Amsterdam News, Tatum's name was "nearly synonymous with the paper's", as described in a notice by The New York Times announcing his death. Although circulation dropped from 58,907 in 1977 to 25,962 in 2000, the paper remained influential.
During the 1984 presidential election, Tatum declined to endorse the candidacy of Jesse Jackson or any of the other Democratic Party candidates. During Tatum's tenure, the paper published a defense of Tawana Brawley after official findings found her 1987 sexual assault claims to be false. In 1989, he decided to disclose the identity of the sexual assault victim in the widely publicized Central Park 5 case.
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Wilbert Tatum
Wilbert Arnold "Bill" Tatum (January 23, 1933 – February 26, 2009) was an American newspaper executive, who variously served as the editor, publisher, chairman and chief executive officer of the New York Amsterdam News, a weekly newspaper serving the African-American community of New York City.
Tatum was born in a three-room shack in Durham, North Carolina, the 10th of 13 children, in 1933. He attended Durham's segregated schools, working during the summer in tobacco fields.
He majored in sociology at Lincoln University, the United States' first degree-granting historically black university. During the Korean War, he served in the United States Marine Corps as a drill instructor in Japan from 1951 until 1954. After completing his military service, he attended Yale University as a National Urban Fellow. Tatum was later awarded a master's degree from Occidental College, where he majored in urban studies.
Tatum spent 13 years working as a mayoral appointee in the government of New York City, during the John Lindsay and Abraham Beame administrations. While director of community relations at the New York City Department of Buildings, he spent a cold winter's night in 1967 in a Queens housing project that lacked heat, to publicize the circumstances of tenants there. He proposed a $6 billion "clothing stamp" program that would provide clothing for the poor nationwide while assisting the city's struggling garment industry. Another proposal would have replaced the site of the former Madison Square Garden with an indoor amusement park.
Through the mid-1980s, Tatum made money in real estate, purchasing and renovating abandoned or neglected buildings that were reconstructed and repaired using unskilled ex-offenders and political refugee laborers.
Tatum was part of a group that purchased the New York Amsterdam News newspaper in 1971, which included investors such as former New York State Comptroller H. Carl McCall and Manhattan Borough President Percy E. Sutton. By the mid-1980s, Tatum had invested more than $400 thousand in the publication, most of it from bank loans using his real estate holdings as collateral. He acquired control of the paper in 1983 and became the paper's sole owner in 1996 after acquiring the stake of the last independent shareholder.
During his 25 years with the Amsterdam News, Tatum's name was "nearly synonymous with the paper's", as described in a notice by The New York Times announcing his death. Although circulation dropped from 58,907 in 1977 to 25,962 in 2000, the paper remained influential.
During the 1984 presidential election, Tatum declined to endorse the candidacy of Jesse Jackson or any of the other Democratic Party candidates. During Tatum's tenure, the paper published a defense of Tawana Brawley after official findings found her 1987 sexual assault claims to be false. In 1989, he decided to disclose the identity of the sexual assault victim in the widely publicized Central Park 5 case.