C. Delores Tucker, political activist,Rap Antagonist, dead at 78,....
by TFSnewsRoom/PhillyInquirer.com
C. Delores Tucker, political activist, dead at 78
By Gayle Ronan Sims
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Political activist C. DeLores Tucker, who arm-in-arm with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was the first African American to serve as Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and in her later years protested against obscenities in rap music, died today at Suburban Woods Health and Rehabilitation Center in Norristown. She was 78.
The West Mount Airy resident spent her entire life fighting for civil rights, a struggle she carried out with poise and elegance. She always wore turbans and matching ensembles, even when taking to the streets or being arrested.
Within hours of her death, many of the city's highest-ranking politicians issued statements mourning the loss.
"The cause of civil rights was a lifelong crusade for C. Delores Tucker" Mayor Street said. "Whether it was marching arm-in-arm with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or advising presidents on race relations, she never gave up the struggle for justice. Her continued work promoting and protecting the legacy of Dr. King and the non-violent 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. The progress that she accomplished was significant and will benefit many Americans and Pennsylvanians for years to come," Gov. Rendell said in a statement.
"She was an unstoppable bell ringer for social change," said U.S. Rep. Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.).
"This woman was a tireless, fearless advocate for justice and equity for people of color, for women, for human dignity," said state Sen. Anthony H. Williams (D., Phila.). "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."
Known for thunderous speeches reflective of her father, 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-Strafford Hotel because it refused entrance to black athletes.
She fired up voters for Joseph Clark in his first bid for mayor in 1951 and worked under the big-top in every presidential campaign since JFK.
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 the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during a civil-rights protest in Selma, Ala., in 1965.
In 1970, she was named the first black woman to be vice chairman 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 Secretary of the Commonwealth. Mrs. Tucker relished her high political profile. The license plate on her state limo read "3" - to let everyone know she was the third-most powerful person in Pennsylvania.
During her tenure, Mrs. Tucker helped streamline voter registration, 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 from her post as Secretary of the Commonwealth for using state employees to write political speeches that earned her $65,000.
Supporters including Jesse Jackson, Dick Gregory and Rosa Parks rallied around her, saying her dismissal was racially motivated.
After being fired by Shapp, Mrs. Tucker excused herself by saying, "Maybe it is wrong, but it is a way of life."
She wondered at the time if 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 in Philadelphia, 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.
Selected by Ebony Magazine in 1971 as one of the best-dressed women of the year, Mrs. Tucker was always well put together with style.
When she announced her run in the Democratic primary in 1992 against U.S. Rep. Lucien Blackwell, she wore a lavender dress with matching turban and shoes. Her campaign colors of lavender and white were seen on her supporters' purple T-shirts, purple balloons and on letters printed in lavender ink on white paper.
In 1993, the civil-rights maverick grabbed headlines when she came out against obscenities found 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 story, 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 insulting messages in the music, that rappers took to ridiculing her in their lyrics. She fired back with five defamation lawsuits against singers and media conglomerates such as Timer Warner Inc. as purveyors of the music genre.
In 1999, a federal judge threw out the suit Mrs. Tucker filed against the estate of the slain Tupac Shakur involving the rhyming of her surname with an obscenity in his 1996 album All Eyez on Me.
She also unsuccessfully sued Time, Newsweek and other publications for their apparent misinterpretation of a lawyer's comment to reporters about a count of 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 last definition that magazines and a number of newspapers, including the Philadelphia Daily News, cited.
Mrs. Tucker and her lawyers denied that the suit had anything to do with damage to her sex life.
The suit was tossed out by U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter in 1999.