Herb is a journalist, activist, and professor, who has authored or edited twenty-three books, including his most recent one, Black Detroit: A People's History of Self Determination. He is also the author of Civil Rights: Yesterday and Today. His book, Baldwin's Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin, was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He, along with Robert Allen, received an American Book Award for Brotherman—The Odyssey of Black Men in America, An Anthology. We Shall Overcome, a media-fusion book with narration by the late Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, is used in classrooms all over the world, as is his Autobiography of a Peopleand The Harlem Reader.His articles can be found in such publications as the Black Scholar, the Final Call, the Amsterdam News, Cineaste, Downbeat, and the Network Journal, among others.

Mr. Boyd has scripted several documentaries, including several with Keith Beauchamp, on cold cases of martyrs from the Civil Rights era that were shown on the Biography Channel and TV One. With filmmaker Eddie Harris, he was the writer on three documentaries—“Trek to the Holy Land,” “Cri de Coeur (Cry from the Heart)”, and “Slap the Donkey” that tracks the Reverend Al Sharpton's presidential bid in 2004. The latter film was shown at the Montreal Film Festival.

For more than forty years, he has taught at institutions of higher learning. Currently, he teaches at the City College New York (CCNY). He serves on the board of trustees at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan.