Dr. Eugene T. Reed, 79; Civil Rights Activist, NAACP Official
Dr. Eugene T. Reed, 79, a Long Island dentist and a leader of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ‘60s, died of a heart attack Sept. 25 at his home in Amityville, N.Y.
Reed held top positions at the local, state and national levels of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.
In the 1960s, he helped organize boycotts, picketing and sit-ins against de facto segregation in New York City schools. He also was active in the South during the most violent period of the civil rights movement. As a Freedom Rider, he pushed for integration of lunch counters and other public facilities.
Born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, in 1923, Reed studied dentistry at Howard University and graduated in 1946.
Motivated by the killing of a civil rights activist in Florida in 1951, he joined the Babylon branch of the NAACP and was elected president in 1953.
After retiring in 1991, he was active in local Democratic politics.
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