Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn-raised Thomas Henry Watkins founder, owner, and publisher of the New York Daily Challenge, passed away on Friday, December 19, 2025.
By Nayaba Arinde | Editor-at-Large, Our Time Press
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn-raised Thomas Henry Watkins founder, owner, and publisher of the New York Daily Challenge, passed away on Friday, December 19, 2025.
“I am sad to hear of the passing of a legitimately acclaimed Black giant in the person of Tom Watkins,” the Rev. Al. Sharpton Jr. told Our Time Press.
Dr. Ben Chavis, President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and long-time friend, associate and colleague of Mr. Watkins, told Our Time Press, “Thomas Watkins was an icon in the evolution of the Black press of America. He was the former chairman of the NNPA and was an outspoken leader who cherished the value of truth-telling for freedom, justice, and equality.
Our responsibility today is to keep the legacy of Thomas Watkins alive and impactful.”
Succumbing to health challenges, Tommy Watkins, a key figure in the Brooklyn community for decades, was the smooth, charismatic, cowboy hat-wearing, community-centered businessman, that many around the state can point to receiving his helping hand – both in political advancement, education and sports, small business and community achievement.
Legendary broadcaster Imhotep Gary Byrd Press told Our Time, “I offer my heartfelt condolences to Tom Watkins’ family and extended family, and I am grateful to him for answering and accepting his calling as a dedicated warrior in the realm of the Black Press.
“The Daily Challenge was the perfect complement to my daily radio broadcast, ‘The Global Black Experience’ on WLIB, and ‘Live from the World-Famous Apollo Theatre.’
“It was an invaluable service to the community, which gave us a critical media foundation and presence in an often hostile media environment. Tom was a true friend, and a Beautiful Brother–who we acknowledge as a ‘GBE’– a true ‘Giant of the Black Experience.’ May he rest in peace and power.”
With the upliftment of, and constant positive communication with, the Black community, Watkins created the city’s only Black daily – aptly named Daily Challenge in 1972 in the massive offices above the Restoration Plaza post office.
Full disclosure, this reporter began her journalistic career in New York at the paper and saw firsthand his genuine commitment to the community in which he was raised.
A property-owner, and well-connected businessman with a deep-rooted allegiance to the community in which he grew, whose family-owned houses, horses, and liquor stores, Watkins, a one-time boxer, was the Renaissance man of this time and space, and maintained community-growth his raison d’etre.
With what at least one admirer describing his “matinee idol good looks,” seen around town, striding with confidence and purpose with his signature cowboy hat, boots, and ponytail, Chavis continued that Watkins had a “full baritone voice that always resonated with a consciousness on behalf of Black America.”
Sharpton added, “I have known Tom Watkins and his father all my life. I remember — when I was growing up as a boy preacher in Bed Stuy–the New York Recorder, which his father published, and then Tom took over. People aspired to be on their most influential list every year. They were the ones every year. When I was 12 years old and joined Operation Breadbasket–the arm of Dr. King’s organization in New York, led by the Rev. William Jones, and Rev. Jesse Jackson, I was the youth director. The only organ that we had, then, was the Daily Challenge and the New York Recorder, which pushed where the Amsterdam News and others would follow suit.
“Tom was fearless. If we were boycotting someone, he would cover it every day in the Daily Challenge. If we were dealing with a police issue, he was there. If we were dealing with a political campaign, he was there. He had the integrity that, in my opinion, was unparalleled by anyone, and he was committed to the cause. He never wanted to bend, buckle, or bow.
“I am indebted to them because they invested in me with coverage and encouragement before anyone saw any possibilities of me doing anything that would be worthy of their support. So, I join people all over the diaspora in mourning a true giant, a person that stood up for us, and told our stories, way before you got big ad dollars to get it. Tom Watkins Jr., may he rest in peace.”
Former Daily Challenge columnist the right Reverend Herbert Daughtry told Our Time Press, “I go back with Tom’s father, Senior, who used to attend Operation Bread Basket, chaired by Rev. William Jones, Rev Sharpton was the Youth Leader, I was the Executive Vice Chair. The intention was to make corporate America respond to the Black community.
“The old man raised his son in the right way. He was a different kind of publisher and newspaperman. He was very active in the community. He attended private organizing meetings. I feel deeply indebted to him because he gave me an opportunity to write weekly articles in the Daily Challenge and the Afro Times, and improve my feeble writing skills. I hold him responsible because I have now written over 20 books. In every one, I felt his influence.”
New York Black media in the 1990s and early 2000s followed a particular strategic playbook. Daughtry stated that, “The Daily Challenge followed the example of Percy Sutton in media, as we, in the Black community who were activists, had a media outlet– Percy Sutton with WLIB, and Tommy Watkins with the Daily Challenge. We had a daily feed of information. Not only was he concerned with local affairs, but he was also very active in the national media trying to bring his organizing skills to that arena.”
A self-described capitalist and promoter of Black community activism and vibrant entrepreneurship, with his Daily Challenge since 1972, Watkins championed the independent Black press, supporting hundreds, if not thousands, of new, young, and established journalists and photographers. There was not a social, economic, political, educational, or other issue affecting the local, national, or international Black community that did not grace the pages of his newspapers over the decades.
Watkins allowed the showcasing of the Black perspective on a myriad of topics. The Daily Challenge became known for comprehensively covering stories and subjects ignored by the mainstream, as they were often popular front-page articles, reporting on, and even stimulating grassroots activism around issues like police brutality, the I-95 gun pipeline, housing and educational inequity, inner city disparities, and movements to challenge violence in the five boroughs. Watkins allowed for the coverage of politicians and their campaigns, and those of judges, union and business leaders, neighborhood-based leaders and community-focus organizations.
Internationally, too, Watkins was not afraid to run analyses and narratives that exposed entrenched false narratives about members of the Black community, leaders, and elected officials. He pushed the envelope to permit accurate reporting void of institutionalized racist bias, forming the foundation. From national awards like the National Newspaper Publisher Association (NNPA) for articles written about President Robert Mugabe, to giving voice to people like the late educator activists Jitu Weusi, Charshee McIntyre and Herman Ferguson; grassroots advocates Minister Khalid Abdul Muhammad, Abubadika Sonny Carson, and Mumia Abu Jamal; and organizations like CEMOTAP, the Nation of Islam, the December 12th Movement, African Helping Africans, the Patrice Lumumba Coalition.
Now printed weekly, the offices relocated from Restoration Plaza in the late 1990s to their current location on Atlantic Avenue, between Nostrand and Bedford Avenue.
Born in 1937, raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the influential Watkins family worked in media and the community. From the co-founding of Restoration Plaza, and supporting the Central Brooklyn Coordinating Council. Thomas Watkins Sr., who worked at The New York Amsterdam News, went on to create The New Recorder, and Tom Jr. followed up with the New York Daily Challenge, the Afro Times, and the New American.
Former managing editor of the Daily Challenge, Dawad Philip, said, “The passing of Thomas H. Watkins Jr, at age 88, is a significant personal blow. On December 20th, 1986, when a mob of white youths chased 23-year-old Trinidadian Michael Griffith from a pizza shop in Howard Beach, and running for his life alongside his stepfather, Cedric Sandiford, Griffith was struck and killed by a speeding car. That incident sparked a volatile and bitter climate in racial and political tensions citywide over the winter, and brought The Daily Challenge into the national spotlight, signaling the rise of Rev. Al Sharpton, attorneys Michael Warren, Alton Maddox, and C. Vernon Mason, and activist Sonny Carson and Rev. Herbert Daughtry to the forefront of the fight for justice.
“It is well chronicled that the city’s Black media with Peter Noel, Lem Peterkin, Nayaba Arinde, Andre Pennix Smith, Wilford Harewood, Utrice Leid, and Andy Cooper
