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for a new strategy. The next day
they proposed to sit in at
segregated eating facilities at the
state Capitol, Fulton County
Courthouse, Atlanta City Hall,
bus stations and 10 eating
establishments. Mays actively sup
ported the demonstrations.
In March 1962, President John
Kennedy was considering appoin
ting Mays to the U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights. However, the
move was opposed by Georgia
U.S. senators, Richard Russell and
Herman Talmadge.
The latter argued that Mays had j
been “identified with or associated'
with at least four different com
munist-front organizations.”
Talmadge’s source was the records
of the House Un-American Ac
tivities Committee.
Talmadge told The Atlanta
Constitution, “They ought to ap
point some ordinary Americans
rather than people who have made
a business of agitating the civil
rights cause.... Dr. Mays’ wholes,
career has been one of partisan ac
tivity and his service on the Civil
Rights Commission would make
him in effect a prejudiced juror.
He could not approach this matter
objectively.”
Kennedy dropped his plans for
appointing Mays.
The Morehouse president was
the first Atlanta Black leader to
come out in support of the 1963
march on Washington, and took
part in it. He endorsed the non
violent philosophy of Gandhi and
King; later, while some whites were
terming Mays a troublemaker,
militant Blacks were charging that
he was too moderate.
< He retired at 72 in 1967, after 27
years as Morehouse president. He
was elected president emeritus. At
the college’s 100th commen
cement, Mays delivered a stinging
rebuke to Atlanta citizens for what
he termed their lack of support of
Morehouse and other predominan
tly Black schools. “The in
stitutions of the Atlanta University
Center have not been accepted by
the people of Atlanta as their
responsibility to help them develop
and grow stronger,” he said.
Morehouse graduates during
Mays’ tenure included King, for
, mer Atlanta Mayor Maynard
r
Marvin Gaye's father pleads innocent
came back upstairs and
opened fire on his son in
the younger man’s
bedroom, Martin said.
Martin said police
arrived to find several
neighbors gathered in the
front yard and inside the
house. A revolver
believed to be the weapon
used in the shooting was
found in the front yard.
Martin said interviews
with members of the
family and with neigh
bors indicated there had
been “bad blood” bet
ween father and son in
the past.
Larkin Arnold, senior
vice president of CBS
Records, which produced
Gaye’s final recordings,
expressed shock at the
singer’s death.
“We are deeply sad
dened,” he said. “Mar
vin was one of the true
musical geniuses of our
time,” Arnold said of the
singer, whose career,
although it had had ups
and downs, seemed to be
on an upswing in recent
months.
By late afternoon, the
crowd in front of the
Gaye residence, swelled
by fans who had heard of
the singer’s death on the
radio, had to be
restrained by police.
It was a mourning
group, however, and not
merely a curious one.
“It hurts so much,”
said Mary Harvey, who
claimed to have every
record Gaye made. “He
was tops.”
J All seemed to agree
that the Gaye household
was a quiet one.
The singer’s parents
had lived in the two
story, brick-front home
for 12 years. Some neigh
bors said Marvin moved
in with his parents when
Mays received 55 honorary degrees
Jackson, state Sen. Julian Bond,
U.S. District Judge Horace Ward,
Fulton County Commissioner
Reginald Eaves, and writer and
historian Lerone Bennett.
Morehouse’s enrollment
doubled,' its endowment
quadrupled, and its faculty grew
from having only two Ph.D.s to
more than 50 percent with that
degree while Mays was president.
Service to education
After only two years of
retirement, Mays entered the
public arena again. He ran for a
£seat on the Atlanta Board of
■Education and won in his first try
for public office at the age of 75.
The board was under a court or
der to further desegregate its
classrooms. Tensions were running
high and the group turned to Mays
for leadership. On Jan. 2, 1970,
the board, made up of seven whites
and three Blacks, elected Mays on
a 6-4 vote to be its head.
He received 200-300 letters and
7 telegrams, he said. Among them
-was at least one that began with a
salutation using a common racial
slur.
Six times during the next 12
years, Mays was re-elected
president. In 1974, he began a new
term with a speech in which he
paraphrased the Apostle Paul,
commenting, “We must be neither
male nor female, Black nor white,
district nor citywide, for we are all
united at the feet of 90,000
children whom we are elected to
serve.”
He was instrumental in gaining
support for the controversial
“compromise” school
desegregation plan, which he
preferred to call the “Atlanta
Plan.”
He was a major force in thwar
ting teacher and classified em
ployee strikes in 1975. Two years
late, he easily won re-election over
Mrs. Goldie C. Johnson, getting
64 percent of the vote. “My op
ponent made the mistake of
making my age an issue,” he said
afterward.
He opposed a suit brought by
American Civil Liberties Union
lawyers calling for cross-county
desegregation, saying it would not
improve the quality of education.
The litigants “don’t have the best
he returned three years
ago from prolonged stay
in Europe, but other
family friends said the
singer “just stayed there
sometimes.”
‘The world is my country’
In a recent interview,
Gaye said he did not
really live anywhere in
particular.
“I live nowhere,” he
said. “Why should I have
a country? Why should I
have that boundary? The
world is my country. I’m
a gypsy. I belong
everywhere.”
It was a sample of pure
Gaye; he was an ego and
he was an artist—and he
gloried in both.
“I’m egotistical,” he
said in a 1982 interview.
“I could lie and pretend
that I’m very humble but
that’s jive. You can’t do
what I’m doing and not
have a big ego to feed.”
Yet he considered him
self a recluse:
“The world,” he said
recently, “isn’t ready for
the real Marvin Gaye.
“I don’t really care
about money or
business,” he explained.
“I’m an artist, not a
con'mercialist. They want
you to make albums all
the time, but I can only
work when I’m moved to
do it. After I’ve worked,
it takes me a long time to
replenish the energy I’ve
used up.”
His style carried the
imprint of gospel singing,
and it was both legitimate
and ironic; Gaye’s first
solos were sung in the
choir of his father’s
Washington, D.C. chur
ch —when he was 3 years
old.
“My family was real,
religious,” he told an in
terview. “My daddy was
a minister and so when I
interests of the child at heart,” he
said. “They have the mistaken
notion that if Negroes are in school
with white folks, they’re going to
be better off. I can’t believe that.”
He retired in 1981. “He has been
such a stabilizing force on the
board,” school attorney Warren
Fortson said. “During the difficult
times of desegregation, he
probably singlehandedly kept the
board from splitting along racial
lines. People so respected him that
they would never do anything to
dishonor him.”
Mountain of honors
He received 49 honorary doc
torates between 1945 and 1981.
Numerous monuments to him
remain in place. The school board
suspended its policy against
naming a facility for a living per
son, and Benjamin E. Mays High
School opened in 1978. Sewell
Road was renamed Benjamin
Mays Drive in 1981. An intersec
tion in his hometown of Epworth,
S.C., where whites once terrorized
his family, was named Mays
Crossroads. A portrait of him
hangs in the South Carolina
Capitol.
He wrote seven books: “The
Negro’s Church,” 1933; “The
Negro’s God,” 1938; “A Gospel
for the Social Awakening,” 1950;
“Seeking to Be Christain in Race
Relations,” 1957; “Disturbed
About Man,” 1969; his
autobiography, “Born to Rebel,”
1971; and “Lord, the People Have
Driven Me On,” 1981.
Mays wrote 15 chapters in other
books, 99 magazine articles, and
various newspaper articles in
cluding a weekly column in the Pit
tsburgh Courier.
Perhaps the greatest tribute paid
him was his selection by the Kirjg
family to speak at the funeral of
the slain civil rights leader in 1968.
“Being asked to eulogize Dr. King
is like asking me to eulogize one’s
deceased son, so close and so
precious was he to me,” Mays
said.
“God called the grandson of a
slaye (said the son of slaves) and
said to him, ‘Martin Luther, speak
to America about war and peace,
speak to America about social
justice, speak to America about
racial discrimination, about its
: iigr
J.
■
>», '■ 'J- 1 ’
Marvin Gaye
began to sing, it was for
him, in church. Gospel? I
was born in the middle of
all that.”
Started with Moonglows
He said it seemed
“only natural” that he
quickly added mastery of
the piano and drums to
his musical skills, and
“the simplest thing on
earth” to decide on a
musical career after
graduation from high
school.
His first professional
experience came with a
vocal group called the
Moonglows, headed by
Harvey Fuqua, with
whom he traveled the
R&B circuit in the late
19505, but he said it was
not “too satisfying. Like
I said—l got a lot of
ego.”
So after a year or two,
Gaye decided to try his
luck as a soloist—and
almost from the first,
that luck was good.
His travels took him to
Detroit where he attended,
a party at which Motowr
Records founder Ber.y
Gordy Jr. was also a
guest.
Gaye performed in
formally during the
’JU
Marvin Gaye Sr.
evening, Gordy liked it,
asked him to “come
around the office” the
next day—and the rest is
history.
He worked for a while
as a session drummer for
Motown, playing for
several early hits by
Smokey Robinson and
the Miracles, but his
destiny was as a vocalist
and in 1962, his first big
hit, “Stubborn Kind of
Fellow,” scored big on
the R&B charts.
Gaye followed it in
1963 with “Hitch Hike”
and “Pride and Joy,”
both major hits, the latter
reaching the No. 1 spot,
and kept going with a
dozen more Top 40
songs.
His next year was even
more impressive: solo
successes such as “You
Are a Wonderful One,”
“Try It, Baby” and
“Baby, Don’t you Do It”
were matched by the suc
cess of “Can I Get a Wit-,
ness?” “Once Upon a
Time” and “What’s the
Matter With You,
Baby?” in which he was
teamed with Motown
vocalist Mary Wells.
This was followed by
f 1 II
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News-Review staff photo
BURIAL —Hearse bearing Dr. Mays’ body
leaves Morehouse Chapel for burial in
Southview Cemetery.
obligation to the poor.’”
He was president of the United
Negro College Fund in 1958-61;
member of the Advisory Council
of the Peach Corps and the
National Commission for
UNESCO.
Mays was married to the former
Sadie Gray of Gray, Ga. Mrs.
Mays died at 69 in 1969, four days
after her husband was first elected
to the Board of Education. She
such hits as “How Sweet
It Is (To Be Loved By
You),” “I’ll Be
Doggone” (with Smokey
Robinson), “One More
Heartache,” “Ain’t No
Mountain High
Enough,” “Ain’t That
Peculiar,” “I Heard It
Through the Grapevine”
(the 1968 hit that many
considered his greatest
single) and an album.
He also showed skill as
a composer, co-authoring
“Dancing in the Streets,”
and as a writer-producer
with the Originals, cut
ting “Baby, I’m for
Real” in 1969.
By the mid-’6os, many
of Gaye’s songs were
beginning to show up on
the national charts. He
headed his own enter
tainment package, the
Marvin Gaye Review,
and moving into the
1970 s expanded his
workload with television
appearancs with such
luminaries as Joey Bishop
and Pat Boone and on the
Tonight Show.
One of his biggest win
ners, “Let’s Get It On,”
was released in 1973.
Gay’s first marriage, to
Anna Gordy, sister of the
Motown founder, ended
in divorce. The pain and>
the massive finality of a
$600,000 divorce set-'
tlement provided the
public gist of three of
Gaye’s Motown
albums “Here My
Dear,” “1 Want You”
and “In Our Lifetime.”
Self-imposed exile
He said he also once
tried to kill himself by
ingesting more than an
ounce of pure cocaine
while in Hawaii after the
breakup of a second
marriage, to Janie Hun
ter. She left him for
another sex symbol,
was founder and chairman of the
board of an Atlanta nursing home
for the aged, which was renamed
in her honor after her death. They
had no children. He is survived by
more than a dozen nieces and
nephews.
Looking back at the years of the
civil rights movement, Mays told
The Atlanta Constitution in 1981:
“Any man who says there has been
no prog-ess is a fool. Progress has
singer Teddy Pen
dergrass.
In addition to teaming
with Mary Wells, Gaye
also had singing partner
ships with three other
women: Kim Weston,
Diana Ross and Tami
Terrell—who collapsed in
his arms on stage in 1967
and died three years later
after a series of
operations for a brain
tumor.
After her death, Gaye
became a semi-recluse for
a time.
The late 1970 s saw a
brief decline in his for
tunes and he declared
bankruptcy at one point
(just a jump ahead of the
Internal Revenue Service,
which said he owed $2
million in back taxes) and
spent the end of the
decade in self-imposed
European exile.
He said he was “Just
living and recharging my
batteries.”
While in Europe, he
asked for and received a
release from the last nine
years of his contract with
Motown (a final album
was “In Our Lifetime,”
released early in 1981)
and signed with CBS.
Other big hits from his
career that became soul
standards included
“What’s Goin’ On” and
“Mercy, Mercy Me.”
Gaye won two Grammy
Awards in 1983, one for
the “comeback” hit
“Sexual Healing,” which
was the standout cut
from the album “Mid
night Love.” He was
nominated for another
Grammy this year.
“You have to suffer to
be an artist,” he said in
an inteview with the
The Augusta News-Review April 7.1984
Times last year. “You
can’t write about suf
fering in love if you
haven’t done it. And let
me tell you—l’ve done
it!”
The CSRA Employment and Training Consor
tium announces that the Consortium is soliciting
Requests for Proposals (RFP) for funding of
programs under the Job Training Partnership Act
(JTPA) for Program Year 1984.
Interested applicants may obtain specifications
and RFP at the Consortium Office. All responses to
the Requests for Proposal must be submitted to:
Bill Watson, Administrator
CSRA Employment and Training Consortium
P.O. Box 1446(13)
811 Telfair Street —2nd Floor
Augusta, GA 30913
no later than 4:00 p.m., May 1, 1984.
coUPONT
Du Pont Operations will be accepting applications for
a limited number of future vacancies for qualified and
experienced:
STENOGRAPHERS
TYPISTS
Applications will be accepted at the SRP Employment
Office, Building 719-A, Saturday, April 7, 1984, from
8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Apply in person only.
E. I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS & CO., INC.
SAVANNAH RIVER PLANT
OPERATIONS EMPLOYMENT OFFICE
AIKEN, SC 29808
AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER
been made, but just not enought.
“I don’t have to worry when 1
go downtown. When I go into a
store, nobody is going to walk up
to me and say, ‘Boy, what you
want?’
“For a long time I never asked a
policeman anything, because he
would give me a lecture. I don’t
hesitate now. In other words, I feel
that I’m a free man in Atlanta.”
from the Atlanta Constitution
Paine
connection
Dr. Mays served on the
Paine College Board of
Trustees from 1969 until
1983 when he was named
trustee emeritus and
awarded the Doctor of
Humane Letters. It was
the last honorary degree
that he received.
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