"God Was With Me"

In memoriam (from everyday people come extraordinary things)...

Update: Also, another leading African American passed today (from today's Inquirer)...

C. DeLores Tucker dies at 78

Lifetime of activism with many firsts

By Gayle Ronan Sims

Inquirer Staff Writer


Political activist C. DeLores Tucker, 78, who marched arm in arm with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was the first African American to serve as secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and in later years protested against obscenities in rap music, died yesterday.

The West Mount Airy resident spent her entire life fighting for civil rights; it was a struggle she carried out with poise and elegance. She was known for wearing turbans with her matching ensembles, even when taking to the streets or being arrested.

Within hours of her death - of undisclosed causes at Suburban Woods Health and Rehabilitation Center in Norristown - many of the area's highest-ranking politicians issued statements.

"The cause of civil rights was a lifelong crusade for C. DeLores Tucker," Mayor Street said. "Her continued work promoting and protecting the legacy of Dr. King and the nonviolent movement for change will never be forgotten."

"America has lost one of the great civil rights activists of our time... . She did it with dedication, class, grace and dignity," Gov. Rendell said.

"I think the state, the nation and the world will long remember a woman who stood up for all people and who dedicated her life to helping others," said Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll.

"She was an unstoppable bell ringer for social change," said U.S. Rep. Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.).

"At a time when women and people of color often were relegated to second-class citizenship, she rose above and challenged those assertions, demanding to be engaged based on her intellect and passion," said State Sen. Anthony H. Williams (D., Phila.).

Known for thunderous speeches reflective of her father, the Rev. Whitfield Nottage of the old Ebenezer Community Tabernacle in North Philadelphia, Mrs. Tucker took to the stump at age 16 - protesting from the back of a flatbed truck outside the old Bellevue Stratford hotel because it refused entrance to black athletes.

Cynthia DeLores Nottage, the second-youngest of 11 children, married William Tucker shortly after graduating from Girls High School in 1946.

In high school, she had shown attributes of a leader and activist by organizing students for elections. Throughout her life she got women to identify with her, giving them the feeling they were all running together.

After attending classes at Temple University, she earned a real estate license and with her husband founded an insurance company in the Olney section of the city. Later, she took business classes at the University of Pennsylvania.

The flamboyant Mrs. Tucker marched into history at the side of Dr. King during a civil rights protest in Selma, Ala., in 1965.

In 1970, she was the first black woman to be named vice chair of the state Democratic Party and the first woman vice president of the Pennsylvania NAACP.

One year later, Gov. Milton J. Shapp tapped her as the first black and first woman to be secretary of the commonwealth. Mrs. Tucker relished her high political profile. The license plate on her state limousine read "3" - to let everyone know she was the third-most-powerful person in Pennsylvania government.

During her tenure, Mrs. Tucker helped streamline voter registration and lower the voting age to 18, and started the first State Commission on the Status of Women.

Mrs. Tucker fell from political grace in 1977, when Shapp fired her for using state employees to write political speeches that earned her $65,000.

Supporters, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Dick Gregory and Rosa Parks, rallied around her, saying her dismissal was racially motivated.

After being fired, Mrs. Tucker excused herself by saying: "Maybe it is wrong, but it is a way of life."

She wondered at the time whether a white man would have been treated the same way.

Mrs. Tucker was not reinstated, and she never again held public office. She ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 1978, and lost a bid for the U.S. Senate in 1980.

She returned to selling real estate and insurance, but remained politically active, making many friends along the way. She was head of the minority caucus of the Democratic National Committee and was a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus.

In 1984, Mrs. Tucker founded the National Political Congress of Black Women, now called the National Congress of Black Women.

In 1993, she grabbed headlines when she came out against obscenities in rap music. She protested, wrote letters, and picketed the NAACP in 1994, even though she was on the board of trustees, when it nominated gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur for one of its Image Awards. (He did not win.)

Mrs. Tucker said in a 1994 Inquirer article that she was "ready to go to jail, ready to die, whatever is necessary to stop this pornographic filth... ."

Indeed, Mrs. Tucker was always ready. She was arrested a handful of times while picketing in front of music stores that sold the music.

She was such a vocal and visible opponent of the messages in the music that rappers took to ridiculing her in their lyrics. She fired back with defamation lawsuits against the artists and the conglomerates that distributed their music.

In 1999, a federal judge threw out the suit Mrs. Tucker filed against the estate of Shakur, who was slain in 1996, involving the rhyming of her surname with an obscenity in his 1996 album All Eyez on Me.

She was also unsuccessful in suits against Time, Newsweek and other publications for their apparent misinterpretation of a lawyer's comment to reporters about her lawsuit seeking damages for emotional distress because of a "loss of consortium."

The legal definition of consortium includes a spouse's loss of "society, guidance, companionship and sexual relations," but it was the sexual aspect that magazines and a number of newspapers, including the Philadelphia Daily News, cited.

Mrs. Tucker and her attorneys denied that the suit had anything to do with damage to her sex life.

The suit was thrown out by U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter in 1999.

Mrs. Tucker is survived by her husband.

Services have not been arranged.