John Doar, Federal Lawyer in Battle Against Segregation

John Doar, who was a leader in the federal government’s legal efforts to dismantle segregation in the South during the most volatile period of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and who returned to government service to lead the team that made the constitutional case for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.

The cause was congestive heart failure, his son Robert said.

Mr. Doar prosecuted some of the most notorious cases of murder and violence in the South in the ’60s, and was instrumental in changing the region’s pattern of race-based politics based on voter discrimination. In 1974 Mr. Doar, a Republican, was named chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee investigating the Watergate scandal.

George Shuba, Whose Handshake Heralded Racial Tolerance in Baseball

George Shuba greeted Jackie Robinson, right, when Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in a minor league game in 1946. Credit Associated Press

George Shuba, the Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder who played in three World Series during the 1950s but who was best remembered for his welcoming gesture to Jackie Robinson at home plate on the day Robinson, as a minor leaguer, broke baseball’s color barrier, died on Monday at his home in Youngstown, Ohio. He was 89. His son, Michael, confirmed the death.

Playing in Brooklyn for seven seasons, Shuba was usually a backup, but he had his moments. Known as Shotgun for his ability to spray line drives, like buckshot, out of his left-handed batting stance, he batted .305 for the Dodgers’ 1952 National League pennant-winner. He was the first National Leaguer to hit a pinch-hit homer in the World Series, connecting for a two-run drive off Allie Reynolds at Yankee Stadium in Game 1 of the 1953 Series.

But his career was most pointedly defined in Jersey City, by an image at home plate at Roosevelt Stadium two years before Shuba made his major league debut.

But his career was most pointedly defined in Jersey City, by an image at home plate at Roosevelt Stadium two years before Shuba made his major league debut.

On the afternoon of April 18, 1946, Robinson became the first black player in modern organized baseball when he made his debut with the Dodgers’ Montreal Royals farm team in their International League opener against the Jersey City Giants.

Shuba in 1948. Credit The New York Times

In the third inning, Robinson hit a three-run homer over the left-field fence. When he completed his trip around the bases, Shuba, the Royals’ left fielder and their next batter, shook his hand.

Congratulating a home-run hitter was a commonplace ritual, but Shuba’s welcome to a smiling Robinson was captured in an Associated Press photograph that has endured as a portrait of racial tolerance.

“I couldn’t care less if Jackie was Technicolor,” Shuba told The Montreal Gazette on the 60th anniversary of that handshake. “We’d spent 30 days at spring training, and we all knew that Jackie had been a great athlete at U.C.L.A. As far as I was concerned, he was a great ballplayer — our best. I had no problem going to the plate to shake his hand instead of waiting for him to come by me in the on-deck circle.”

Robinson had four hits in five plate appearances that afternoon in the Royals’ 14-1 victory. In their second game of the season, Shuba hit three home runs.

Randolph Thrower, I.R.S. Chief Who Resisted Nixon

Randolph W. Thrower in 1969. Credit United Press International

 

Randolph W. Thrower, a Republican lawyer who headed the Internal Revenue Service under President Richard M. Nixon from 1969 to 1971 before losing his job for resisting White House efforts to punish its enemies through tax audits, died March 8 at his home in Atlanta. He was 100.  

 

Mr. Thrower’s unusual legal background — as a federal tax law expert and a lawyer for death row inmates in Georgia, most of them black, in the Jim Crow era — helped garner wide support from lawyers’ groups and lawmakers when Nixon nominated him for I.R.S. commissioner.

And though his tenure was short, he was instrumental in two historic overhauls of American tax policy: revoking the tax-exempt status of private schools that excluded blacks, and passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1969, which he helped draft. The legislation eliminated some loopholes for the rich and exempted many poor people from federal taxes altogether.

 

 

But it was not Watergate that haunted Mr. Thrower; it was the case of Will Coxson, a black teenager convicted in the late 1930s of raping a white woman in Marietta, Ga., and sentenced to die. Mr. Thrower took the case on appeal in 1940 and discovered that Mr. Coxson’s alibi was solid and that the victim’s initial description of her attacker as “a light-skinned black man” had changed significantly when the prosecution brought the case to trial. Mr. Coxson was dark-skinned.

The Georgia Supreme Court ordered a hearing on whether Mr. Coxson had received adequate representation, and Mr. Thrower was preparing for that when he left to join the Marines. Turning the case over to another lawyer, he said, he felt sure that the evidence would sustain an appeal all the way to the United States Supreme Court if necessary and win Mr. Coxson’s freedom. But the case “withered on the vine,” he said, and while Mr. Thrower was serving in the Pacific, Mr. Coxson was executed.

“For the past 60 years, no case has kept me awake at night as much as this,” he said in a 2001 lecture, “wondering what else I might have done to save the life of this young man. His life should not have been taken.”

 

Jean Stapleton, Who Played Edith Bunker, Dies

An AP story: Jean Stapleton, the stage-trained character actress who played Archie Bunker's far better half, the sweetly naive Edith, in TV's groundbreaking 1970s comedy "All in the Family," has died. She was 90.

TheNY Times puits it differently: Stapleton, Archie’s Better Angel, Dies at 90

David F. Smith/Associated Press - Jean Stapleton, left, and Carroll O'Connor held their Emmy awards in 1972 in Hollywood, CA

 Jean Stapleton, the character actress whose portrayal of a slow-witted, big-hearted and submissive — up to a point — housewife on the groundbreaking series “All in the Family” made her, along with Mary Tyler Moore and Bea Arthur, not only one of the foremost women in television comedy in the 1970s but a symbol of emergent feminism in American popular culture, died on Friday at her home in New York City. She was 90.

Segregated even in death

Max Whittaker for The New York Times - For decades, remains that were moved from the Gold Rush-era Negro Hill Cemetery were buried under headstones with a racial epithet.

Wedged between a strawberry patch and an encroaching swath of suburbia, the men and women who lie in the Mormon Island Relocation Cemetery are a long-dead, little-noted lot: a Mr. Outen, for example, who died in December 1862, or Elizabeth, the wife of James, who died in April some two decades later. But for the better part of five decades, the most notable tombstones at Mormon Island were those without names: 36 anonymous decedents whose grave markers shared a single, shocking label: “Moved from Nigger Hill Cemetery.”

Perhaps more jarring were the words that followed, saying that the headstones were placed “by U.S. Government” in 1954.

There is an explanation, albeit a tortured one. In the early 1950s, the United States Army Corps of Engineers was charged with relocating hundreds of graves from cemeteries due to be submerged by the creation of Folsom Lake, which was formed by a dam about 25 miles northeast of Sacramento. And one of those was a Gold Rush-era town known as Negro Hill.

Negro Hill Burial Ground Project


momentum for switching the stones really began to build only in 2009, when Josh Michael, a local Boy Scout, drafted an elaborate proposal to replace the markers to fulfill his community service obligation for becoming an Eagle Scout. Josh, now 15, was unavailable for comment because he was — no kidding — climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

Historian and Social Critic

Times obituary: Manning Marable, a leading scholar of black history and a leftist critic of American social institutions and race relations, whose long-awaited biography of Malcolm X, more than a decade in the writing, is scheduled to be published on Monday, died on Friday in Manhattan. Mr. Marable, a prolific writer and impassioned polemicist, addressed issues of race and economic injustice in numerous works that established him as one of the most forceful and outspoken scholars of African-American history and race relations in the United States.

Mr. Marable’s political philosophy was often described as transformationist, as opposed to integrationist or separatist. That is, he urged black Americans to transform existing social structures and bring about a more egalitarian society by making common cause with other minorities and change-minded groups like environmentalists..

Basketball history

Roy Skinner, the Vanderbilt University coach who recruited the first black athlete to play varsity basketball in the Southeastern Conference and who led the Commodores to more victories than any other coach, died Monday in Nashville. He was 80.The cause was respiratory failure, Mr. Skinner’s daughter Chris said. When Vanderbilt’s chancellor, Alexander Heard, encouraged Mr. Skinner to recruit black players in the mid-1960s, Mr. Skinner immediately began to search for suitable players and eventually recruited Perry Wallace, a high school star in Nashville.


“I don’t think Skinner was looking to make history, but he was aware of it,” said Andrew Maraniss, a Vanderbilt alumnus who is writing a biography of Mr. Wallace. “I think the most important thing to Skinner would be that Wallace was a great player, and also a great student, a valedictorian.”

Mr. Wallace, 63, said that although Mr. Skinner rarely if ever addressed the racial hostility Mr. Wallace faced, he was a calming influence during difficult times. “The test is not, did he stand up to hostile crowds?” Mr. Wallace said. “His basic manner and his approach and the fact that he was sincere in trying to help me was most important to me.”

Mr. Skinner later said that recruiting black athletes from the North was difficult because black students “were skeptical going to the South.” He also said that he received petitions from alumni against recruiting blacks. “I only took that with a grain of salt,” he said in a 2007 article on the Vanderbilt Commodores’ Web site. “There wasn’t anything they could do about that.”

Roy Gene Skinner was born in Paducah, Ky., on Apr. 17, 1930. He graduated from Presbyterian College in South Carolina in 1952, and he played point guard throughout his high school and college years. Mr. Skinner took his first job coaching basketball for Paducah Junior College in 1955. In 1957, he became an assistant coach at Vanderbilt, and in 1958 he became the acting head coach. He became the head coach in 1960 and held the position until 1977. He won 278 games during his career and was named the SEC’s coach of the year four times.


Mr. Skinner is survived by his second wife, Nathleene Skinner; five children from his first marriage, Kim Skinner and Chris Skinner, both of Dothan, Ala., Joe Skinner of Greenville, S.C., Tapp Skinner of Greer, S.C., and Dea Skinner Johnson of Anderson, S.C.; and eight grandchildren.

October 30, 2010: Roy Skinner, Who Recruited First Black Basketball Player in SEC, Dies at 80. By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK. NYT

He spied

Early entries of his obituary.2 from the LA Times, 1 from the NY Daily News.

Actor Robert Culp dies after falling at his Hollywood home

March 24, 2010 | 2:02 pm

Culp Actor Robert Culp, best known for his role as an international tennis star and globe-trotting secret agent in the hit 1960s television series "I Spy," died Wednesday morning after a fall at his Hollywood home, authorities said.

The 79-year-old actor was rushed to Queen of Angels hospital shortly after 11 a.m. after hitting his head while taking a walk outside his home in the 1800 block of El Cerrito Place, said LAPD Lt. Bob Binder. He was found by a jogger who called 911, and paramedics, patrol officers and detectives responded to the scene.

He was pronounced dead at the hospital a short time later. A preliminary investigation found "that his death is accidental and there appears to be no sign of foul play," Binder said. An autopsy by the Los Angeles County Coroner's office is pending.

Culp broke into Hollywood in the late 1950s but catapulted to fame playing Kelly Robinson in the hourlong 1965-68 espionage series "I Spy," which was shot in exotic locales around the world.

Besides its popularity, the show also broke the color barrier for dramatic television series as the first noncomedy series to star an African American actor, Bill Cosby.

Off screen, Culp has been active in civic causes, most recently in his efforts to oppose construction of an elephant exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo.

In 2007, the actor joined with real estate agent Aaron Leider in filing a lawsuit against zoo director John Lewis and the city to stop construction of a $42-million elephant exhibit and bar the zoo from keeping elephants there, accusing authorities at the facility of withholding medical care from the animals and keeping them cramped in small places.

Last year, after temporarily halting construction on the elephant exhibit amid a fierce debate, the City Council voted to go ahead with the project as planned.

A full obituary is coming shortly from The Times.

-- Andrew Blankstein

Photo: Robert Culp in the action-adventure television series "I Spy."

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Robert Culp never cracked Emmy's secret code
March 24, 2010 | 4:48 pm
Robert Culp died TV news

Robert Culp may have portrayed a secret government agent on TV, but there's one thing he never spied on his mantle at home: an Emmy or Golden Globe.

Before his death today at age 78, Robert Culp was nominated by both of those awards, but he had bad luck. Actually, he had really bad luck at the Emmys considering that he lost best drama actor three years in a row (1966-68) to his "I Spy" costar Bill Cosby. Culp was also nominated once for writing (1967), losing to Bruce Geller ("Mission: Impossible"). That other hit espionage TV series, "Mission:Impossible," out-gunned "I Spy" twice in the battle over best drama series (1967, 1968). In 1966, "I Spy" lost to "The Fugitive."

Both Bill Cosby and Robert Culp lost best TV actor at the Golden Globes in 1967 to Dean Martin ("The Dean Martin Show"), but "I Spy" won best TV show that same year. Culp isn't listed as one of the technical winners of that statuette, but he deserves much of the credit for his dashing role as a spy parading as a pro tennis player.

Photo: Robert Culp and Bill Cosby in "I Spy" (NBC)

 Bill Cosby and Robert Culp in "I Spy."


Veteran actor Robert Culp, who teamed with Bill
Cosby to break down racial barriers on the hit
1960s show "I Spy," died Wednesday after
collapsing outside his Hollywood home.

The 79-year-old actor was found on the ground by
a jogger who called 911, cops said.

The actor's son was told he died of a heart attack,
said Culp's manager, Hillard Elkins.

Culp was a versatile actor known for his dramatic
and comedic work on stage, television and movies.

He was debonaire and easily pulled off the man-in-
charge look, making him perfect for his roles as the
arrogant mayor of New York in 1985's "Turk 182"
- and as the corrupt president in 1993's "The
Pelican Brief."

But he first came into national prominence with "I
Spy," a television milestone that ran from 1965-68.
It was the first integrated television show featuring a
black actor as one of the leads.

Culp and Cosby traded quips as the show's cool co-
stars, combining humor and adventure in a style
copied for decades.

He and Cosby were also involved in civil rights
causes, and when Martin Luther King Jr. was
assassinated in 1968 the pair traveled to Memphis,
Tenn., to join the striking garbage workers King had
been organizing.

One of his most acclaimed film roles was as Bob in
the 1969 sex comedy, "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice."

On television he appeared for three seasons in the
1980s as an FBI agent for three seasons on "The
Greatest American Hero." And from 2000 to 2004,
he had a recurring role on the hit "Everybody Loves
Raymond" as Ray Barone's father-in-law.

Culp also worked as a director, and had dozens of
television credits across his half-century in the
business.