Renowned journalist, photographer and poet, Askia Muhammad has died. The Black Press stalwart, who served as a columnist, news director and photographer, over a career of more than 40 years, died Thursday (Feb. 17) in his Washington D.C. home.

WPFW-Radio in Washington, D.C., announced his passing in a statement: “With deep sadness, the family of Askia Muhammad announces his passing of natural causes today at the age of 76.”

Born Charles Moreland in 1945, in Yazoo City, Miss., Muhammad attended San Jose State University from 1966 to 1970. Richard Prince’s Journalisms explains that the war and racial issues of the time and the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. compelled him to leave the Navy’s Officer Candidate School. In a 2018 interview with WAMU-FM’s Kojo Nnamdi, Muhammad explained, “Newsweek magazine offered me an internship in 1968, which I accepted, and declined to go back to OCS.”

Writing for his friend Todd Steven Burroughs’ blog “Drums in the Global Village” Muhammad said he occupied a mixed space. “Like Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, I am conflicted: ‘an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body.’ I am an endangered species, a heterosexual Black man in a White, Holly-weird-dominated news media. “But like Brother Malcolm X,” he continued, “my relative anonymity in the Black Press left me free from having to be concerned on a daily basis, with whether or not White people liked what I had to say. And furthermore, I got a glimpse at how that ‘other half’ lives.”

Washington, D.C. radio station, WPFW, where Muhammad served as News Director, shared a tribute with listeners and fans expressing the heartbreak of many who worked with Muhammad over the years. "He gave us all so much, always graciously and with a smile. Always speaking truth to power. Always standing up for those he loved.”

The Washington Informer, where Muhammad had written for four decades, shared its own tribute to the D.C., notable. His column appeared regularly in Black-owned newspapers around the country, and he was a commentator for more than 25 years on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

Muhammad’s most recent book, “The Autobiography of Charles 67X,” featured a collection of photos, poetry, and personal essays about his experiences in journalism covering Black life, politics and culture.

Tributes poured in on social media from activists and artists, writers, musicians and the scholarly world alike.  Many remembered his works, and impact over the years in the media.