Civil-Rights Panel Leader Pendleton Dies

Clarence M. Pendleton, the outspoken chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission who incurred the wrath of liberals and fellow blacks because of his conservative views on busing and affirmative action programs, died Sunday after suffering a heart attack.

Pendleton, 57, collapsed at about 10 a.m. while working out at a health club in San Diego and died an hour after being rushed to the hospital, authorities said.

Workers at the San Diego Hilton Tennis Club said Pendleton fell face-down near several exercise bicycles inside the facility’s weight room. Gary Lingley, director of the club, rushed to Pendleton and applied cardiopulmonary resuscitation until paramedics arrived about 15 minutes later.

The emergency team managed to “get a weak pulse and some breathing” before Pendleton was taken to AMI Mission Bay Hospital, Lingley said. Despite “aggressive resuscitation” efforts applied by doctors at the hospital, Pendleton died at 11:13 a.m., Deputy Coroner William Leard said.

Lingley said Pendleton had joined the health club about two months ago and worked out three or four times a week on the weights and exercise bikes. Pendleton, once a champion swimmer, had suffered a heart attack in 1976.

Authorities were unable to notify Pendleton’s wife, Margrit, until about 5:30 p.m. because she had taken their daughter, Paula, and other neighborhood children to a Los Angeles amusement park for the day, Leard said.

Pendleton’s tenure in the U.S. Civil Rights Commission was marked by controversy since the day in 1981 he was appointed by President Reagan to head the board, which was established in the 1950s as an advisory body for Congress.

A former president of the San Diego Urban League, Pendleton, the first black to head the commission, quickly forged a conservative reputation in Washington, displaying staunch support for Reagan’s efforts to limit the scope of affirmative action, which he labeled a “bankrupt policy.” Pendleton also opposed desegregation through busing.

Under his leadership, the commission conducted a study that Pendleton said indicated that no gains in minority status could be attributed to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Such stands brought Pendleton into direct conflict with many of his black peers and liberal lawmakers. Some responded by urging that funding for the Civil Rights Commission be canceled, an effort Pendleton labeled foolhardy because it would sever whatever links blacks had to the Reagan Administration.

“He wasn’t outspoken because he wanted publicity, he was outspoken because he deeply believed in the issues,” said John Eastman, public affairs director for the Civil Rights Commission. “He was like a man shouting fire. He thought he needed to shout about those things.”

He was born Clarence McLane Pendleton Jr. on Nov. 10, 1930, in Louisville, Ky. He grew up in Washington, where his father was the first swimming coach at Howard University and an assistant community recreation director.

Pendleton came from a well-established family and went on to Howard, where he excelled as a swimmer and football player while earning his degree. After a stint in the Army, he returned to the university in 1957 as a physical-education instructor and swimming coach.

Although long a self-described “bleeding-heart liberal,” Pendleton tilted toward conservatism after he came to San Diego in 1972 to head the Model Cities program. Influenced by then-Mayor Pete Wilson and longtime Reagan confidant Edwin Meese, Pendleton became a Republican in the mid-1970s.

After more than three years with the Model Cities program, Pendleton assumed the post of executive director for the San Diego Urban League, a spot once held by Vernon E. Jordan before he became head of the National Urban League.

Pendleton earned both criticism and praise with the Urban League. Under his leadership, Pendleton said, the league negotiated $24 million in business loans, created 8,000 non-subsidized jobs and returned $17 for every dollar invested in it by the city.

He resigned in 1982, after being ordered to rehire the former league controller who raised allegations that Pendleton mishandled the agency’s money. Among other charges, the controller said Pendleton misspent $94,000 of a federal grant and failed to report his $14,400 annual expense allowance to the Internal Revenue Service.

Those allegations, including a battle over $10,000 in vacation pay Pendleton took the day he resigned from the league, led to delays in his confirmation to the Civil Rights Commission chairmanship. Pendleton was eventually confirmed on a unanimous vote of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but not until he was recalled to testify about his tax returns.

Charges of fiscal impropriety continued to dog Pendleton during his years with the civil rights panel. In 1986, Pendleton came under fire from congressional critics armed with a new government audit they said showed irregularities in hiring, questionable travel, poor record-keeping and failure to account for $175,000 budgeted to the commission.

But it was Pendleton’s outspoken comments about civil rights that prompted perhaps the greatest furor. In 1984, he called the concept of comparable worth, a controversial proposal aimed at reducing the gap between women’s and men’s earnings, “the looniest idea since Looney Tunes came on the screen.”

Served on Boards

He belittled black leaders in some speeches, calling them “new racists” for supporting affirmative action and breaking America into competing racial classes. In a 1984 news conference in Los Angeles, Pendleton sarcastically suggested that blacks should petition Congress to pay “reparations” instead of continuing to support affirmative action regulations.

Although his role as chairman of the commission took him often to the nation’s capital, Pendleton maintained his home in San Diego and continued to serve on a long list of boards for both businesses and charitable organizations.

At various times he was chairman of San Diego Transit, a trustee of the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation and on the boards of the Great American First Savings Bank and of the San Diego Coalition for Economic and Environmental Balance. Pendleton also served as president of a San Diego-based business development and investment firm, Pendleton & Associates.

Pendleton also traveled extensively around the country to talk on college campuses and visit state advisory commissions, according to Eastman.

“One of the things that was interesting to me was that, although he did earn the ire of black leaders, it didn’t translate down to the general level,” Eastman said. “People who those black leaders were supposed to represent would come up on the street and say, ‘Keep it up, Penny. We’re behind you.’ ”

Besides his wife and youngest daughter, Pendleton is survived by two grown children from a previous marriage, George and Suan, who live in Washington.