Activist Jack Kimbrough Remembered

The flowers didn’t make it to the Kimbrough home.

It was a bittersweet note for a son paying respects from Sacramento upon learning of the death of Jack Johnson Kimbrough, a civil rights pioneer who had lived in San Diego since 1935. The florist heard the ZIP code for Kimbrough’s Logan Heights address and refused to go.

Fear of a crime-ridden neighborhood may have warded off a delivery, but it didn’t affect Kimbrough’s closest friends. They came, son John Kimbrough said. And they kept coming.

A stream of friends, made during Jack Kimbrough’s 57-year residence on the southeast edge of downtown, paid their respects this week. Of late, Kimbrough suffered from respiratory problems, his son said.

On Monday, he collapsed in his home and was taken to Paradise Valley Hospital, where he died of respiratory arrest, relatives said. He was 83.

Jack J. Kimbrough, named after the prizefighter his father admired, was a civil rights prize fighter of sorts.

In the 1940s he organized a series of sit-ins at restaurants and hotels that did not serve blacks. He later punctuated acts of civil disobedience with desegregation lawsuits. He founded and was the first president of the San Diego Urban League. He was a former president of the NAACP’s local chapter and was San Diego’s first black dentist.

Local leaders said the Kimbrough home was a cultural gathering place for African-Americans from which the doctor dispensed courage to the afflicted and wisdom to the wanting. Over the decades, Kimbrough shared his experiences with thousands who crossed his porch, John Kimbrough said.

“For a long time, we were trying to convince my parents to move to a smaller house--to a safer neighborhood,” John Kimbrough said. “My father always wanted to stay here.”

Kimbrough leaves a home full of African-American history: in the library, a collection of antique and contemporary books by black Americans. African masks and tribal artifacts grace the walls.

But, most of all, the man leaves memories.

“I’m just sorry he’s gone,” his son said. “We’re all going to miss him.”

Kimbrough is survived by his wife of 36 years, Quincella; another son, Alden of Los Angeles; two daughters, Jackie Ryan and Mary Kimbrough of Los Angeles; five grandchildren; a brother, Samuel of El Cerrito, and two sisters, Mary Alice Bomar of Oakland and Sylvia Scott Parker of Berkeley.

Funeral services begin at 11 a.m. Saturday at Calvary Baptist Church, 719 Crosby St.