Those We Lost — October 13

Honoring those we lost on October 13 — remembered for what they gave, and for what they left behind.

Clarence Muse

Born October 14, 1889 — died October 13, 1979

Actor; director; composer; screenwriter

Muse, born in Baltimore, became the first African American to appear in a starring role in a major studio film, Hearts in Dixie (1929), and acted for five decades in more than 150 films. He became the first African-American Broadway director in 1943 with Run Little Chillun, composed the songs and co-wrote the story for the 1938 musical Way Down South, and co-wrote When It’s Sleepy Time Down South, which became Louis Armstrong’s theme song. He was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1973, and his final film, The Black Stallion, was released in 1979, the year he died one day short of his 90th birthday.

Eileen Southern

Born February 19, 1920 — died October 13, 2002

Musicologist, pianist, author, editor, and professor

Southern wrote The Music of Black Americans, founded Black Perspective in Music, and became the first Black woman appointed to a tenured full professorship at Harvard. Her scholarship established African American music as a rigorous, expansive field reaching far beyond jazz and reshaped university teaching and research.

Vivian Malone Jones

Born July 15, 1942 — died October 13, 2005

Civil-rights pioneer and federal public servant

Malone Jones entered the University of Alabama in 1963 despite Governor George Wallace’s effort to block integration and became the university’s first Black graduate in 1965. Her quiet determination helped dismantle a central symbol of educational segregation. She later worked in civil rights and environmental justice for the federal government.

Joe C. Meriweather

Born October 26, 1953 — died October 13, 2013

Basketball center; college coach

Meriweather, a 6-foot-10 center from Southern Illinois University, was the 11th pick in the 1975 NBA draft and earned All-Rookie honors in his first season. He played ten NBA seasons for the Houston Rockets, Atlanta Hawks, New Orleans Jazz, New York Knicks and Kansas City Kings, and he blocked 10 shots in a game twice, a feat that still stands as the Knicks’ franchise record for blocks in a game. He is in the Southern Illinois Hall of Fame and became the most successful women’s basketball coach in Park University history, leading the team to its only NAIA national championship tournament in the 2005-06 season.

Timuel Black

Born December 7, 1918 — died October 13, 2021

Historian; educator; civil rights activist; author

Black, born in Birmingham, Alabama, fought at Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and helped liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp. He helped organize the Chicago contingent to the 1963 March on Washington, helped elect Harold Washington as the city’s first Black mayor in 1983, and taught as a Chicago Public Schools history teacher and a City Colleges of Chicago sociology and anthropology professor. His books Bridges of Memory and Sacred Ground documented the Black experience in Chicago. The Chicago History Museum gave him its John Hope Franklin Making History Award for Distinction in Historical Scholarship in 2006 and named the Timuel Black Teacher of Excellence Award for him.

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Born October 25, 1946 — died October 13, 2025

Transgender rights activist; community organizer; author

Miss Major, born in Chicago, participated in the 1969 Stonewall uprising, in which LGBTQ people stood up against police harassment. She joined the Transgender Gender-Variant and Intersex Justice Project in 2003 and was its first executive director, serving until she retired in 2015, and after moving to Little Rock in 2016 she founded House of GG in 2019 as a retreat and educational center for trans people. Verso Books published her memoir, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary, in 2023.