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Source From http://www.newsnet5.com
CLEVELAND – Cleveland attorney, former Cleveland school board president, community activist and radio talk show host Stanley Tolliver died early Monday morning at the Stokes Cleveland VA Medial Center. He was 85 years old.
Cuyahoga County Coroner spokesman Powell Caesar said Tolliver suffered from cancer and had been in hospice care for at least a few months.
According to a biography on thehistorymakers.com , Stanley Eugene Tolliver Sr. was born in Cleveland on October 29, 1925. He was the only child of Eugene and Edna Tolliver.
Tolliver graduated from East Technical High School in 1944 and got his bachelor’s degree from Baldwin-Wallace College in 1948. Tolliver then earned his LLB degree from John Marshall School of Law in 1951, followed by a LLD degree in 1968 and his J.D degree in 1969.
After completing his LLB, Tolliver served in the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps from 1951 through 1953.
Tolliver served as legal counsel for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Leadership Conference and the Congress of Racial Equality.
He was the only African American attorney involved in the defense of the students charged in the Kent State University anti-war protest in 1970. Tolliver was a well-known defense attorney, often representing defendants in high-profile cases in Greater Cleveland.
Tolliver, joining other Ohioans, led the call for the Cleveland Public Schools to desegregate. After state and local boards of education were found guilty of operating a segregated school system in Cleveland, Tolliver was appointed to the Committee on the Office of School Monitoring and Community Relations in 1978.
Tolliver was first elected to membership on the Cleveland Board of Education in 1981. In his twelve years of service, he was board president twice. As a community activist, he often spoke on the need for more parental involvement in the lives of Cleveland schoolchildren. He was greatly involved in issues of civil rights in the community.
An avid runner since high school, Tolliver was inducted into the East Technical High School’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1978. Well into his life, he was an avid runner, affiliating with a group he called the “Over-the-Hill Track Club.”
A lifelong member of the NAACP, Tolliver hosted the popular weekly radio show, “Conversations with Stanley E. Tolliver Sr.” on WERE-AM. On the broadcast, he took telephone calls from listeners who exchanged opinions about politics and events in Cleveland. He always emphasized that he tried to be a voice for poor people.
Tolliver was married to the late Dorothy Olivia Greenwood Tolliver for 50 years. They were the parents of three grown children.
