Brilliant and dedicated, perfectionist and driven, aggressive and sometimes arrogant, journalist Gerald M. Boyd had what it takes to rise to the top. After a career of many firsts, Boyd shattered the color barrier of the white establishment’s most exclusive media giant, the New York Times, and became its first black managing editor.

But the dream came to an abrupt end when Boyd was forced to resign in 2003 in the wake of scandal over a reporter who had plagiarized and fabricated news stories. Like Boyd, the reporter was black, and despite the lack of any such relationship between them, Boyd was deemed to be the young man’s mentor, an assumption based solely on race.

A moving story of a man’s hard-won rise and devastating fall as well as a candid discussion on race and journalism, Boyd’s tale provides a rare inside view of power and behind-the-scenes politics at the nation’s premier newspaper during one of its most tumultuous periods. My Times in Black and White is an inspirational story of a journalist who covered presidents, documented extraordinary social and cultural challenges, led his team to an unprecedented number of Pulitzers, stumbled disastrously, and ultimately discovered the true value of his life.