[1] Tatum spent 13 years working as a mayoral appointee in the government of New York City, during the John Lindsay and Abraham Beame administrations.
While director of community relations at the New York City Department of Buildings, he spent a cold winter's night in 1967 in a Queens housing project that lacked heat, to publicize the circumstances of tenants there.
[2] During his 25 years with the Amsterdam News, Tatum's name was "nearly synonymous with the paper's", as described in a notice by The New York Times announcing his death.
[4] During Tatum's tenure, the paper published a defense of Tawana Brawley after official findings found her 1987 sexual assault claims to be false.
The associate executive director of the American Jewish Congress recognized in 1984 that "Tatum has been very sympathetic and understanding of problems confronting both Jews and blacks".
[2] Asked by his daughter why he did not pursue public office, he responded that he could help most in his role leading the oldest continuously-published African-American newspaper.
Through the mid-1980s, he had made money in real estate, purchasing and renovating abandoned or neglected buildings that were reconstructed and repaired using unskilled ex-offenders and political refugee laborers.
That same year, he was recognized by the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies for his efforts on behalf of runaway children in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
[1] Tatum died, aged 76, on February 26, 2009, from multiple organ failure in Dubrovnik, Croatia, where he was traveling with his wife, Susan.