Charles Cook, Watts Times Publisher, Dies

Charles Cook, publisher of the weekly L.A. Watts Times and a leader in the Congress of Racial Equality who championed better job opportunities for blacks, has died. He was 63.

Cook died Sunday at his home in View Park of heart disease, officials at the newspaper said.

Formerly the president of CORE’s Cleveland chapter, Cook came to Los Angeles in 1975 as Western regional director for the organization. He led boycotts against motion picture studios for degrading portrayals of blacks and worked to improve hiring of blacks in the entertainment and other industries.

“My most enduring lesson from my father was the importance of self-sacrifice for the economic development of the African American community,” his son, Watts Times General Manager Gordon Cook, said in a statement. “He was the greatest man I have ever known.”

Charles Cook and his late wife, Beverly, bought the newspaper in 1976, about a decade after it was founded in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots. He took over marketing and advertising functions and, until her death, she supervised the administrative and editorial duties.

The publisher was credited with developing the paper from a tabloid handed out solely in Watts to a financially sound weekly circulated throughout Los Angeles, Long Beach, Carson, Compton, Inglewood, Gardena, Santa Monica and West Hollywood.

“Charles Cook was a person who understood the problems in the African American community. On many occasions, he knowingly took a position through the L.A. Watts Times to call attention to the lack of direction that our community has,” Celes King, California chairman of CORE, said through Cook’s newspaper. “Time after time, you could get information out of the L.A. Watts Times that was simply not covered by other news media.”

Born in DeWitt, Ark., and brought up in Canton, Ohio, Cook attended Ohio’s Bowling Green University and served in Korea with the Marines.

He is survived by his daughter, Watts Times Associate Publisher Melanie Polk; sons Gordon and Dalton; three brothers; two sisters; and one granddaughter.

Funeral services are scheduled for 3 p.m. today at Inglewood Cemetery Mortuary, 3801 W. Manchester Blvd., Inglewood.