Remembering Those We Lost in 2011

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/moving_america_news/35789

Black America lost a host of the famous and the infamous in 2011, a mix that includes many unforgettable activists, entreprenuers, athletes and entertainers – and the man responssible for the biggest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Here is BlackAmericaWeb.com’s list of the notable, and some little noted but noteworthy, who died in 2011.

JANUARY

Jan. 6 – Donald John Tyson, 80, known as “Mr. Chicken,” for turning Tyson Foods, Inc. into the largest chicken company in the United States.

Jan. 8 – Manie Barron, an editor and literary agent who was a popular advocate for African-American writers, died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where he was being treated for lung cancer. He was 55. Among his clients and protégés were Michael H. Cottman, Patrice Gaines, vampire novelist L.A. Banks and fiction writer Guy Johnson, the son of Maya Angelou.

Jan. 13 – Genius grant recipient Ellen Stewart, founder and director of the pioneering off-off-Broadway group La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, died after an extended illness. She was 91.

Jan. 14 – David W. Hardy, 68, the leader of the successful racial discrimination lawsuit filed by four black journalists at The New York Daily News in the late 1980s, died after suffering a heart attack while working part time in customer service for the Vamoose Bus Co. in New York, a job he held as he worked on a book about his lifelong struggles with racism. The lawsuit against The Daily News stands as the only case in which a U.S. newspaper was convicted of racism.

Jan. 18 – Leon E. Wynter, a journalist and cultural critic who worked for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal and co-authored Rep. Charlie Rangel’s memoir, “And I Haven’t Had a Bad Day Since,” died of brain cancer at Montgomery (Co.) Hospice’s Casey House in Rockville, Md. He was 57.

Jan. 26 – Gladys Horton, 66, co-founder of Motown ‘60s girl-group The Marvelettes, died of a stroke. Horton sang lead on the group’s first hit single, “Please Mr. Postman.”

Jan. 28 – Charles Herbert Flowers, a former flight instructor of Tuskegee Airmen, died of complications of renal and heart failure at age 92. The North Carolina native moved to Maryland and lived in Prince George’s County for 49 years, where a high school was named in his honor. He enrolled in the Army Air Corps program in Tuskegee in 1941, was among the first cadet graduates and became a flight instructor in 1942, where he remained for five years.

FEBRUARY

Feb. 3 – Ernest Dunbar, a writer and editor for the old Look magazine and one of the first black reporters at any mainstream national publication, died in Manhattan after a long illness. He was 83. In the late 1960s, Dunbar was president of Black Perspectives, a New York group of black journalists, which predated the National Association of Black Journalists.

Feb. 8 – Soul singer Marvin Sease – known for straightforward, sexy lyrics so direct they didn’t get much radio play – died of pneumonia in Vicksburg, Miss., a week shy of his 65th birthday. His best known hit was “Candy Licker.”