T. Thomas Fortune

T. Thomas Fortune runs the New York Globe (later the Age), a Black newspaper that gives Peggy Scott her first real chance as a journalist. Sharp, exacting, and unwilling to soften his politics for polite company, he pushes his writers toward honesty over comfort, and expects the same discipline from himself.

Sullivan Jones plays him with brisk, unshowy authority — a man too busy building an institution to perform his own importance. The show uses him to open up the world beyond the Manhattan drawing rooms, and he's compelling simply as a boss: demanding, principled, quick to spot talent and quicker to demand it be used well.