JBHE: Latest News for 4/6/06

In Memoriam

James Cornelius Gray Jr. (1947-2006)

James C. Gray Jr., civil rights lawyer and professor of law at the University of the District of Columbia, died in March from brain cancer. He was 58 years old.

Gray, a native of Washington, D.C., was the son of a doctor. He was one of the first black students at St. Albans School, a private and prestigious preparatory school in the nation’s capital. He went on to Harvard University where he earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations. He stayed at Harvard for law school and served on the editorial board of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1972, he served as an assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York City. After a brief stint as a legal adviser to the U.S. mission to the United Nations, Gray returned to civil rights litigation with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, in Washington.

Myrtle L. Brown (1927-2006)

Myrtle L. Brown, a former professor at Virginia Tech and a government research nutritionist, died recently at a healthcare facility in San Gabriel, California. She had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.

A native of Columbia, South Carolina, at age 19 Brown graduated from Bennett College, the historically black college for women in Greensboro, North Carolina. After college she began her career at the Human Nutrition Research Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She later earned a master’s and a Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University.

Professor Brown first taught at the University of Hawaii. While there she coauthored the college textbook, Nutrition: An Integrated Approach. The text was revised and updated twice.

From 1974 to 1983 Brown worked for the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of the Sciences, serving as executive secretary during her final seven years there. She then taught biochemistry and nutrition at Virginia Tech until her retirement in 1989.