In 1982, Mr. Byrd founded a support/advocacy group -- INTERace -- for interracial individuals and their families in New York City and served as that group's President for three years.
In 1992, he began publishing Interracial Voice in print form and switched to an all-electronic format on the World Wide Web in September 1995.
Mr. Byrd organized the Multiracial Solidarity March which took place on July 21, 1996 in Washington, D.C. This was the first attempt ever to bring together individuals of mixed-race and their families to seek redress from the government. In this case, the purpose was to petition the Office of Management of Budget to establish a multiracial category on the 2000 Census. Additionally, the March protested the rising tide of white segregationist/supremacist and black nationalist/separatist sentiment sweeping the country.
More recently, Mr. Byrd has spoken before student organizations at Princeton University and at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
Mr. Byrd wrote an Op-Ed piece entitled "The Census' One-Drop Rule" in the June 14, 1995 edition of New York Newsday. He was featured in the November 1996 issue of Ebony magazine and was interviewed in October 1996 on Tony Brown's Journal. Mr. Byrd was interviewed for a segment of MSNBC's evening news on May 20, 1997 as well as PBS's "NewsHour" with Jim Lehrer on July 16, 1997.
Additionally, Mr. Byrd has been interviewed on radio and television programs and for news articles too numerous to be mentioned here. All of these public appearances and interviews dealt with the issue of "race" in general and the multiracial initiative/movement specifically.
Charles Michael Byrd was born September 2, 1952 in Abingdon, Virginia and is of a blended ("black," "white" and Cherokee) heritage. An honorably discharged United States Air Force veteran -- Aerospace Weapons Systems Security, January 1971-October 1974 -- he is currently the Editor/Publisher of Interracial Voice, an Internet newsjournal which serves as a networking tool for the multiracial community in cyberspace.
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