By Deborah Bailey, Special to the AFRO
Nationally-syndicated radio show host and philanthropist Tom Joyner will deliver the commencement address for Morgan State University’s 142nd Spring Commencement Ceremony on May 19. Joyner, host of the nationally broadcasted “Tom Joyner Morning Show,”and founder of Reach Media, The Tom Joyner Foundation and BlackAmericaWeb.com, will address nearly 1,000 academic degree candidates at the Hughes Stadium during the morning ceremony.
Joyner will talk with students about how he used his degree in sociology, awarded from Tuskegee University in the 1970s, to become the “hardest working man in radio.” He earned the nickname when he took jobs in stations in both Dallas and Chicago in 1985 and, for three years, flew between the cities daily to host his weekday radio show.
Nationally-syndicated radio show host and philanthropist Tom Joyner. (Courtesy Photo)
Joyner started his radio career shortly after graduating from Tuskegee and refined the morning show format on a variety of stations throughout the country until 1994, when ABC Radio Networks signed him to host a nationally-syndicated version of the “Tom Joyner Morning Show,” featuring Joyner and a team of comedians and public affairs commentators discussing the news of the day interspersed with R&B music and hit songs.
Joyner’s commitment to HBCU’s (historically Black colleges and universities) led him to establish the Tom Joyner Foundation in 1988. The Foundation, which has raised more than $60 million to help fund scholarships for students attending HBCU’s has featured Morgan University as its “college of the month” on numerous occasions, most recently August 2017.
Joyner will be awarded an honorary degree from Morgan May 19 along with veteran filmmaker and former Morgan professor Stanley Nelson and Gloria Ladson-Billings, a university professor emerita and president of the National Academy of Education.
The academic procession starts at 9 a.m.