Gerald Boyd, the former New York Times managing editor who resigned along with executive editor Howell Raines after the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal, died yesterday of lung cancer at the age of 56.

According to the Times, he had kept his illness from friends and colleagues. The Times quotes him speaking to a crowd in St. Louis:

"Throughout my life I have enjoyed both the blessing and the burden of being the first black this and the first black that, and like many minorities and women who succeed, I've often felt alone."

In his first public remarks after resigning from the Times, speaking to the National Association of Black Journalists in 2003 (where he is pictured, above), he explained that the only "myth" that bothered him in reporting of the affair was when Newsweek called him a mentor to Blair.

"If we had known how deeply troubled Jayson Blair was," Boyd said, "he would not have been writing for the New York Times."