Lives

Andrew Cooper, 74, a civil rights advocate and publisher of The City Sun, a defunct Black weekly in New York, died on Jan. 28 in Brooklyn. He had a stroke. In 1984 Cooper founded The City Sun, which was published until 1996.

Two former Harlem Globetrotters have died. Opal "Shag" Courtney, 89, died on Dec. 26 in Gary, Ind. Courtney - who is credited with creating the spinning the ball on the index finger and rolling it across the shoulders and down the arm move began traveling with the Globetrotters in 1934 and played three seasons with the team. Bernard Price, 86, died on Jan. 24 of kidney failure at a hospital in Chicago. Price was drafted by the Globetrotters in the mid-1930s and played for more than 10 years with the team.

Helen Dickens, M.D., 92, the first Black woman named a fellow by the American College of Surgeons, died from complications of a stroke on Dec. 2 in Philadelphia. In 1998, the University of Pennsylvania Hospital named the Helen O. Dickens Center for Women's Health in her honor.

William Epton, 70, a street-corner orator and head of the local branch of the Progressive Labor Movement during the Harlem riots in the summer of 1964, died of stomach cancer on Jan. 23 in a Manhattan hospital. His remarks tested the limits of free speech and resulted in his being the first person convicted of criminal anarchy since the Red Scare of 1919.

Frankie Gaye, 60, a singer and composer, died from complications after a heart attack on Dec. 29 in Los Angeles. Gaye's 1960s combat experience as a radio operator stationed in Vietnam influenced his older brother Marvin's 'What's Going On" album.

Justice Robert D. Glass, 78, the first Black member of Connecticut's Supreme Court, died on Nov. 27 in Waterbury, Conn. Glass, who was also the first Black fulltime federal prosecutor and first Black juvenile court judge in Connecticut, served on the state's high court from 1987 to 1992.

Blues guitarist John Jackson, 77, who was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1986, died of kidney failure on Jan. 20 at his home in Fairfax Station, Va. Jackson recorded nine albums between 1965 and 1999 and continued to work as a part-time gravedigger throughout his career.

Leopold Sedar Senghor, 95, the first president of Senegal, died on Dec. 20 in Normandy, France. He had a heart ailment. Senghor represented colonial Senegal in the French National Assembly from 1946 to 1958 and was elected the country's first president upon its independence in 1960. Also a poet, Senghor helped found the cultural magazine Presence Africaine in 1947.

Jame is L. Usry, 79, who in 1984 was the first Black man elected mayor of Atlantic City, died on Jan. 25 in a nursing home in Galloway Township, N.J. Usry had been suffering from cancer and diabetes. Usry, a Republican, served six years as mayor.

Henry Preston Whitehead Jr., 84, a historian who was recognized as an authority on Black theater memorabilia, died on Jan. 8 at the Hospice of Northern Virginia. He had cancer. Whitehead served as chairman and president of the Washington, D.C.'s Howard Theater Foundation for 10 years and was an adviser to the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Institution.

Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated Mar/Apr 2002
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