Willis Edwards, a los derechos civiles y activista político en Los Ángeles’ Comunidad afroamericana y la ex dirigente de la sección de Beverly Hills-Hollywood de la NAACP que era una fuerza polémica detrás de su industria del entretenimiento Image Awards, ha muerto de cáncer. Era 66.
Edwards murió el viernes en Providence Holy Cross Medical Center en Mission Hills, una portavoz del hospital confirmó.
Edwards era muy conocido en el afroamericano local y nacional y Partido Demócrata círculos como un impetuoso pero entrañable “conjunto” quien trabajó en muchas elecciones, incluyendo el 1988 campaña presidencial del Rev. Jesse Jackson. Él fue capaz de encanto y empujar su camino a través de obstáculos potenciales para hacer introducciones cruciales o maniobrar a alguien que admiraba en la mejor oportunidad de la foto. Entre sus esfuerzos favoritas, he played an important role in securing national honors for civil rights hero Rosa Parks late in her life and seating her next to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton when President Clinton delivered the 1999 State of the Union address.
“Willis was really a creative genius. He could gain access to the Casa Blanca or to any chamber he wanted to. He could get doors open that others couldn’t,” said former U.S. Rep. Diane Watson, for whom Edwards worked as a volunteer and paid consultant in elections dating back to her races for a seat on the Los Angeles school board and state Senate in the ’70s. “He was a connector, he was a doer. There was nothing impossible for Willis.”
Except for an unsuccessful run in 1978 for a state Assembly seat, Edwards mainly stayed behind the scenes, but his motivation always was about civil rights, Watson said Saturday. “He saw how it would feel to be left at the back of the line, and he just wasn’t going to have that,” dijo.
LA. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa also praised Edwards. “The legacy of Willis Edwards is that he made the impossible possible; he fought the unjust for justice; he spoke boldly in the places of silence; and he stood tall and fearless as a leader when others cowered,” Villaraigosa said in a statement.
Beyond racial discrimination, Edwards fought another battle later in life. He nearly died of SIDA 15 Hace años, at a time when even some people in the civil rights movement considered VIH a taboo subject. Edwards, who was single and never publicly discussed his sexuality or how he contracted HIV, recovered thanks to new drugs and in 2001 habló en una convención nacional de la Asociación Nacional de. para el Avance de la Gente de Color sobre las dificultades de vivir con el VIH.
Presidenta nacional de la organización, Roslyn M. Brock, el sábado, dijo que Edwards, quien sirvió en la junta nacional de la NAACP por más de una década, “promover y proteger la imagen de los afro-americanos en las artes … y derribó las barreras a la conversación honesta acerca del VIH / SIDA en las comunidades de color.”
Edwards fue elegido presidente de Beverly Hills / Hollywood rama de la NAACP en 1982. Convenció entonces presidente NBC Brandon Tartikoff televisar nacionalmente Premios Imagen del grupo, un evento repleto de estrellas de cine que se centró en elevar el perfil de los negros en frente y detrás de las cámaras en Hollywood. Pero más tarde, Edwards tangled with a black TV star.
En 1988, comedian Arsenio Hall called Edwards an “extortionist” y “tennis-shoe pimp” and alleged Edwards threatened to publicly complain that Hall had not hired enough blacks to work on his talk show unless Hall gave $40,000 to the NAACP. Edwards filed a defamation lawsuit against Hall that, Edwards said, was eventually settled for a substantial sum.
Edwards was reelected branch president in 1989 but resigned later that year amid criticism that the group’s finances were not properly managed and that he took a $25,000 payment to help produce the Image Awards.
Friends described Edwards as living modestly in a Hollywood apartment, uninterested in luxury but thriving on access to celebrity and power. En una 2002 profile of Edwards in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, reporter John L. Mitchell described how Edwards elicited both admiration and contempt “for being a man who, without wealth or political office or a car or a 9-to-5 job, through raw gifts and sheer guff, insinuated himself into the highest levels of influence.”
Born in Texas in 1946, Edwards was raised in Palm Springs and enrolled at Cal State L.A., where he was the first African American to be elected student body president. Drafted by the military, he was slightly wounded in a land mine explosion in the Vietnam War and was awarded a Bronze Star. He later worked as director of black student services at USC.
Edwards became active in Usted. Robert F. Kennedy'S 1968 presidential campaign and was in the Ambassador Hotel celebrating his victory in the California Democratic primary when Kennedy was assassinated. He was a political ally of Tom Bradley, Los Angeles’ first black mayor, who appointed Edwards to the city’s Social Service Commission in 1973.
As he struggled to recover from AIDS-related weight loss and other problems in the late ’90s, Edwards was visited by Parks. Revered for refusing in 1955 to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to a white passenger, Parks sought Edwards’ help for her civil rights institute. He generated publicity for her and escorted her down the red carpet at the Academy Awards en 1998. Besides playing a role in allying her with the Clintons, Edwards helped lobby for Parks to receive the Congressional Gold Medal and for her casket to lie in honor in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington after her 2005 muerte. “Rosa Parks stands for something,” dijo a The Times en 2002.
Edwards le sobreviven una hermana, Brenda, y un hermano, Franco, junto con sobrinos. Los arreglos funerales están pendientes.
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