As Michael Lomax Prepares to Step Down, UNCF’s Next Chapter Begins on Solid Ground
Eleven years ago, I sat across from Dr. Michael L. Lomax in a conference room at UNCF’s headquarters, a stone’s throw from Howard University, and asked him a question that visibly straightened his posture: What was it like to follow Bill Gray?
I asked because I knew the answer mattered to me personally.
William H. Gray III had been my congressman growing up in Philadelphia, a preacher who never gave up his pulpit at Bright Hope Baptist Church even as he rose through the halls of Congress to become the first African American to serve as House Majority Whip — only to walk away from that seat of power to lead the United Negro College Fund. In the world I came up in, Gray’s name was spoken with the same reverence reserved for the ministers and civil rights elders who shaped Philadelphia’s Black church tradition. So, when UNCF’s board announced a few weeks ago that Lomax, too, will step down, in June 2027, after twenty-two years at the helm, my mind went immediately back to that conference room and to the shoes Lomax had to fill when he first sat in that chair in 2004.