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February 12, 1924 - February 28, 2010
Theodore Lamont Cross, an author, publisher, photographer, and civil rights activist, died in late February at a hospital in Fort Myers, Florida. He was 86 years old.
Mr. Cross, a native of Wellesley, Massachusetts, whose home was in Princeton, New Jersey, was a graduate of Amherst College. After serving as a naval officer in the South Pacific in the closing days of World War ?, Cross enrolled in Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1950, Cross pursued a number of careers, all with great energy and success. First he was appointed general counsel of the Sheraton Hotel chain. In this position he negotiated a settlement of one of the early civil rights protests at the Hotel in San Francisco. After joining Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1 965 voting rights march in Selma, Alabama, Mr. Cross took a leave from Sheraton and became a minority economic development and community action consultant in Washington.
For many years, Mr. Cross was a leading spokesman for black economic development. His book, Black Capitalism - the "catalytic work on minority capitalism," according to Black Enterprise magazine - inspired a number of new federal programs aimed at strengthening black business and employment. His second book, The Black Power Imperative, argued that...