Theodore Berry; Cincinnati’s First Black Mayor

Theodore Berry, 94, civil rights pioneer and the first black mayor of Cincinnati. Born in Maysville, Ky., Berry grew up in Cincinnati, selling newspapers, shining shoes, shoveling coal, delivering laundry and shelving books in libraries. He became his high school’s first black valedictorian, but wasn’t allowed to walk next to a white classmate in the commencement procession. Berry worked his way through the University of Cincinnati and its law school, becoming a pioneering civil rights lawyer and president of Cincinnati’s NAACP. In 1945, he was asked by future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to defend three Tuskegee Airmen in a high-profile court-martial. The three Army Air Corps officers were charged with protesting a segregated officers club at a base in Seymour, Ind. Berry, who had worked as a morale officer with the Office of War Information in Washington early in World War II, won acquittal for two of the three men, and 50 years later the Air Force pardoned the one who had been convicted. Berry made his first try for office--the Cincinnati City Council--in 1947 but lost. He was successful two years later, and was chosen vice mayor in 1955. His advance to the mayor’s office was delayed when the city changed to a new method of voting that many considered racist. He finally was elected mayor in 1972 and served for four years. During the 1960s, Berry worked in Washington as a top official in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty. On Sunday in Loveland, Ohio.