Edwin Berry; Chicago Rights Activist
Edwin C. (Bill) Berry, a former president of the Chicago Urban League who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when the civil rights movement focused on the city, has died at the age of 77.
Berry, who died Wednesday at Michael Reese Hospital where he was undergoing treatment for a pancreas ailment, was remembered as “a man for all seasons” by Mayor Harold Washington, whom Berry helped recruit to run for mayor in 1983.
Berry entered the Urban League movement in 1937 in Pittsburgh and worked in Portland, Ore., before being named executive director of the Chicago Urban League in 1956.
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