Wilfred Defour, an aircraft technician for the famed Tuskegee Airmen during World War 2, was recently found dead in his Harlem, New York, home. A home health care worker found Mr. Defour’s body in the bathroom. He was 100 years old. Foul play was not involved. While in the service, Mr. Defour painted the tails of the aircraft from […]
When Bill Cosby, the 81-year-old comedian, was sentenced to prison in September after a jury convicted him of three counts of sexual assault, he joined a growing number of inmates housed in state and federal prisons across the country who are elderly and infirm and who are very expensive to house and care for because of their health challenges […]
By Frederick H. Lowe BlackmansStreet.Today Phillip Jackson, chief of staff for the Chicago Public Schools under Paul Vallas and Gery Chico and chairman and founder of the Black Star Project, died Sunday after a long bout with cancer. He died while in care at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois. Mr. Jackson, who was 68, also suffered from vitiligo, […]
Willie McCovey, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame after a stellar career, mostly with the San Francisco Giants, died Wednesday from undisclosed health problems. As McCovey grew older, he was confined to a wheel chair. Mr. McCovey was 80, reported MLB. com on the San Francisco Giants website. McCovey, who was born January 10, 1938, in Mobile, […]
Congressman Ron Dellums Congressman Ron Dellums, who along with 13 others, established the Congressional Black Caucus more than 45 years ago, has died. Dellums, a native of Oakland, California, served in Congress 27 years. Dellums died Monday at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 82 and he died of cancer. An anti-war activist, Dellums was elected mayor of Oakland […]
By Frederick H. Lowe Winifred Madikizela-Mandela, ex-wife of Nelson Mandela, died Monday, Al Jazeera and several other news outlets are reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa, near where she lived. Winifred Mandela was 81 years old. “She died after a long illness, for which she had been in and out of the hospital since the start of the year,” Victor Diamini, […]
By Frederick H. Lowe Linda Brown, the named plaintiff in the 1954 landmark civil rights case “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka” in which the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the nation’s public schools to desegregate, has died. Ms. Brown died Sunday, March 25, in Topeka, Kansas, where she was born on February 20, 1942. She was 76 and […]
NorthStar looks back and honors these extraordinary people we lost in 2017…. By Susan M. Miller 19 November Della Reese (b. July 6, 1931; Detroit, Michigan), 86, singer, actress and minister, began singing in church, was discovered at thirteen by gospel great Mahalia Jackson and sang with her group. From there, her bright and varied career led her to a […]
By Frederick H. Lowe Charles Manson, who orchestrated the murders of eight people, including an unborn child, in the hope of inciting a race war between blacks and whites, has died of natural causes unlike his cult’s victims. The 83-year-old Manson died November 19 in a Kern County hospital in Corcoran, California. Manson initially was sentenced to death in 1971 […]
Barbara Gonzaque Boutte, widow of the Alvin J. Boutte, CEO of Indecorp, Inc., the holding company for Independence Bank of Chicago, has died. Mr. Boutte also was president of Independence Bank, once the nation’s largest black-owned bank. Mrs. Boutte died July 17 in her Markham, Ill., home from multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. She was 86. Known […]