Noah Griffin, Jr.

Noah Griffin Jr., is a San Francisco native and has served local and national communities throughout his career in various capacities, including as a historian, writer, newspaper columnist, radio and television talk-show host, law editor, press secretary, campaign manager, lyricist and vocalist.

Griffin was a full-time, talk-show host on KGO Radio in San Francisco from 1980 to 1982, where he continued to work as weekend host until 1985. He was an op-ed columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, and served on the Examiner’s editorial board. He served as a nationally syndicated columnist through Scripps–Howard, and the first San Francisco columnist to appear on PBS NewsHour. He served as Press Secretary to San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan from 1993 to 1996, and was appointed to the Mayor’s Council on Criminal Justice.

While spending nearly four decades in government and politics in and around San Francisco, Griffin continued to sing at the Venetian Room of the Fairmont Hotel, at the legendary Purple Onion, and at other venues.

Following in the footsteps of his father, an early civil-rights pioneer, Griffin attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he sang with the famed Fisk Jubilee Singers. He received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Fisk in 1967 and a law degree from Harvard Law in 1970, and was a history fellow at Yale University. The CORO Foundation Fellowship in Public Affairs in San Francisco (1972–1973) and a Phelps-Stokes History Fellowship (1991) are among the many awards Griffin has received.

Griffin and his wife, Meredith Browning Griffin, reside in California and share five grown children.