by Laniaya Hoofatt

With a front-row seat to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, Robert Naylor was affected by the media at an early age.

"I remember seeing the white-only signs," said Naylor, describing the Jim Crow South of his youth in Mississippi. When he was a child, his parents were active in registering blacks to vote.

As a result of the activism of Naylor's family, his home was shot at and intimidation was normal, but they were not deterred from fighting for equal rights. "Separate but equal can never be equal," Naylor said.

National coverage of the events impressed upon him the role of the media. "What I saw were people who came outside of the area and saw what we are going through and seeing the need that was there," he said.

Today, Naylor is currently the director of career development for the Associated Press with more than three decades of journalistic experience. He majored in journalism in college, where he decided against majoring in performance piano and his first choice — an architecture degree — was not offered.

His career took him on many roads; Naylor was an editor for a Mississippi paper and a department press secretary.

The media have evolved over the years since he was a child, Naylor said, and he now watches reporters grapple with how to cover LGBT rights.

He sees a clear difference between the articles written about same-sex marriage by reporters who are gay and those who are not. "The things that people personally care about affect the way they tell the story," Naylor said.

He knows about that commitment to storytelling from personal experiences. Naylor grew up in a Baptist household with two strong parents. Having a sense of personal responsibility, respecting others and simply knowing right from wrong have shaped him for the life he leads.

"I think that is a big part of my passion for newsroom diversity," Naylor said. "Who we are affects the story that we tell."