Rev. Mark Thompson
Senior Advisory Committee
Member
The Rev. Mark A. Thompson spent half of his life as a political
activist in the Washington, DC, before relocating to New York City in
2010. His civil rights/political
organizing includes:
●
the 1984 and 1988 Jesse Jackson presidential campaigns
●
the movement forcing Georgetown University to divest from
apartheid South Africa in 1985
●
KIAMSHA, the 1990 student protest and boycott at the University
of the District of Columbia, for which he was named one of the "100 Most
Powerful People in Washington" by Regardie’s
magazine
●
defeating the Congressionally-imposed ballot initiative forcing
the death penalty on the District of Columbia in 1992
●
weekly civil disobedience on Capitol Hill--for which Mark was
jailed for 20 days--that helped win the first-ever Congressional vote on DC
Statehood in 1993
●
the Umoja Party, the last Black political party with
ballot-status in the U.S. from 1994-2000
●
the Million Man March in 1995, which Mark emceed
●
every anniversary of the March on Washington, each of which Mark
emceed
●
joining Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Dick Gregory, Joe Madison
and journalist Gary Webb in 1996 to expose the CIA’s role in the crack cocaine
epidemic
●
the 2004 Al Sharpton Presidential Campaign
●
the NAACP Police Task Force from 1996 - 2010
●
the 2017 Womens March
Radio & TV Host, Political Analyst and Commentator; graduate of the University of the District of Columbia, Mark was honored at the 104th Annual
NAACP Convention in Orlando in July 2013 “for 25 years of crusading journalism
and outstanding leadership in furthering the work of civil and human rights.”
Mark is a frequent analyst and commentator on cable news.
Mark’s began his broadcast career in 1988 with Radio One, Inc.
under the guidance of owner Cathy Hughes, for whom the Howard University School
of Communications is now named, and the very building in which Mark was born
when it was formerly Freedmen’s Hospital. Mark began as a news correspondent
for WOL-AM, which once featured the renowned Petey Greene. When Hughes tapped
Mark to host her popular morning show, she hired Dick Gregory to be his
co-host.
Mark anchored coverage of the dedication of the MLK
Memorial. He broadcast Occupy Wall Street live, on location from New York's
Zuccotti Park. His ministry, broadcasting and activism have taken him to the
streets of Sanford, Florida, Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland in the
aftermath of the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. In
2013, at a Moral Monday led by The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber and the North
Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, he was arrested and jailed live on air. He broadcast from Johannesburg and
Soweto during the first-ever democratic elections in 1994 in South Africa,
where he received the name, Matsimela
Mapfumo,
Mark attended the Georgetown University School of Foreign
Service before earning his Bachelor’s in Journalism from the University of the
District of Columbia. He earned his Masters in Divinity from Howard University.