Black History Month

C. DeLores Tucker

Also known as: Cynthia DeLores Nottage
Born: Oct. 4, 1927–Oct. 12, 2005
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Ethnicity: African American
Nationality: American
Occupation: Activist, Founder

Born Cynthia DeLores Nottage, October 4, 1927, in Philadelphia, PA; daughter of Whitfield (a minister) and Captilda (Gardiner) Nottage; married William Tucker (a businessman), July, 1951.

Civil rights activist and fund–raiser for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, ca. 1955–2005 first female member of the Philadelphia Zoning Board; Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1971–77; president, Federation of Democratic Women, 1977; chairman, Democratic National Committee Black Caucus, 1984; founder and national chair, National Political Congress of Black Women, 19842005 Founder, Bethune–DuBois Fund, a scholarship and opportunity program for minority youngsters.

Membership

NAACP (board of trustees), Rainbow Coalition, National Organization of Women, Democratic National Committee.

Awards

Honorary doctorate degrees from Villa Maria College (Erie, PA), and Morris College (Sumter, SC); NAACP Freedom Fund Award, 1961; named one of the 100 most influential black Americans by Ebony magazine, 1972–77; Thurgood Marshall Award, 1982.

C. DeLores Tucker never shied away from sensitive political issues. A longtime civil rights activist who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and raised funds for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Tucker took her deep convictions and organizing skills into a new arena later in her life. She launched a crusade to alter the violent, anti–female message in gangsta rap, a message she saw as undermining and even contributing to the early deaths of American youth — especially black youth. From 1994 on, Tucker used her considerable skills as a political figure and public speaker to denounce gangsta rap and to persuade the major entertainment conglomerates not to sell it. "It's an abomination to all of us, after we were taught to sing the songs of faith and hope and freedom in the days of slavery, to let this go on," she told the Chicago Tribune. "I'd die before I'd let that music continue to be."

Tucker's crusade led her into some unlikely alliances. Being a liberal Democrat who worked diligently for her party, she joined forces with Bill Bennett, a conservative Republican and former member of the Reagan and Bush administrations who has also inveighed against offensive rock and rap lyrics. In 1995 Bennett and Tucker mounted an effective dual campaign aimed primarily at Time Warner, Inc., in order to persuade the media giant to sever its ties to record distributors who sold gangsta rap. Tucker explained in the Los Angeles Times that, while she disagreed with Bennett's political views, she was completely in accord with him on the issue of promoting better values among youth. "This [issue] transcends politics," she concluded. "This is a human issue. This deals with the most sacred gift God has given the world, and that's the child. We have a responsibility to preserve, protect, and make sure that the child is nurtured with the most positive of virtues and values. Let's make virtues and values something that is a proud badge for everyone to wear."

Cynthia DeLores Nottage was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1927 and was the tenth of eleven children in her family. Her Bahamian–born father and her hard–working mother approached life from a Christian perspective and encouraged their children to do so as well. Sundays found the close–knit family together in church, where young DeLores directed the choir and played the saxophone. "My mother and father gave us wonderful values," Tucker claimed in Good Housekeeping. "They taught us to be good and loving, and to use our lives to help others."

The notion that she was a "child of the king" helped Tucker to deal with racial slights when she was young. She originally intended to become a doctor, but after an illness that kept her out of college for a year, she changed her course. In 1951 she married William Tucker, a construction company owner who soon built a fortune in Philadelphia real estate. Although the couple never had children of their own, they helped to raise nieces and nephews, and they built an enduring, mutually respectful relationship. In the Washington Post, William Tucker called his wife "one of the most fearless individuals I have ever known," adding: "She will take on anyone, anything, if that is what she thinks is right.... She is not one who will readily entertain the idea of compromise about anything."

As the civil rights movement gained momentum in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Tucker found the perfect channel for her activism. She joined the NAACP and helped to raise funds for the organization, a task that she conducted as a member of its board of trustees. She also participated in marches and demonstrations all around the country, joining the Reverend and Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr. in their call for freedom and equality. Tucker recalled those days in the Washington Post: "I realized we always started at the church and marched to the political kingdom, whether local or state or national. And I realized that's where we needed to go to make a difference. That's where the decisions were being made that affected our lives, but we weren't in those seats."

As the 1960s progressed, Tucker campaigned for black candidates and served on the Pennsylvania Democratic Committee. She also became the first–ever black member of the Philadelphia Zoning Board. Her ties to the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania served her well when, in January of 1971, she was named Secretary of the Commonwealth by then–governor Milton Shapp. The appointment made Tucker the highest–ranking black woman in state government, an honor not lost on Ebony magazine, which listed her as among the "100 most influential" African Americans every year during her tenure. She lost the position in 1977, "after charges that she used state workers and resources to produce speeches for which she received $65,000 in 28 months," as stated in a Washington Post report.

After leaving state government, Tucker turned to national politics. She served as chairman of the Black Caucus of the Democratic National Committee for 11 years and spoke at the Democratic National Convention five times. She also entered the 1992 Congressional race in her Philadelphia district, but she lost in the primary election. Her private business dealings included real estate ventures and a position with the Philadelphia Tribune.

In 1984 Tucker began a new organization that has since grown in power and influence. The National Political Congress of Black Women (NPCBW) was formed to advance the interests of the black community, especially its women. The group has devised a 10–point covenant plan to reclaim and improve the African American community — focusing on voter registration, education quality and equity, welfare reform that will not victimize poor people, and fair and adequate legal services for everyone. The NPCBW has involved itself with broad national issues as well as small local ones — throwing its clout behind beleaguered Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia J. McKinney and other black congresswomen, as well as honoring civil rights pioneers such as Myrlie Evers–Williams, Dr. Betty Shabazz, and Coretta Scott King.

Under Tucker's direction the NPCBW has also included the reform of the music industry in the group's agenda. Tucker herself became enraged by gangsta rap after she saw the effect it had on some of her young nieces and nephews. In Good Housekeeping, Tucker described the plight on one niece who had parroted the bad language she heard in the songs to the point that she had become "at eighteen... a social leper." When she turned her attention to the lyrics of rap songs — especially those of Snoop Doggy Dogg and Tupac Shakur — Tucker was infuriated. Beginning in 1993 with local demonstrations in front of record shops, she began to fight back.

With her sharp command of rhetoric and her elegant, turban–clad appearance, Tucker quickly became recognized for her campaign against gangsta rap. Calling the music "sleazy, pornographic smut," she waged war by passing out leaflets containing the lyrics from some gangsta albums and exhorting people to read them out loud. One person who took the challenge was political leader Julian Bond, who, in a column for the Columbus Times, expressed agreement with Tucker's stance. "C. DeLores Tucker is convinced that this music and the talent that creates it can be a force for good, and that positive images can be sold to young Americans just as easily as the stereotypical visions of sex–crazed young black women and thuggish young black men some of this music promotes," Bond wrote. "If you agree, maybe you'll pay a little more attention to what goes into your youngster's head.... Maybe you might start by letting him know that if he can't recite it at the breakfast table, he can't import it into his mind or your house any other way."

Just as she had in the civil rights days, Tucker decided to take her fight right into the corporate boardrooms of businesses profiting from gangsta rap. The first and most visible target she chose was Time Warner, Inc., a massive entertainment conglomerate that owns records, magazines, movies, television stations, and other forms of entertainment. In 1995 Tucker bought stock in Time Warner, enabling her to gain entrance to the company's annual shareholders' meeting. There she took the microphone and challenged the executives to read aloud the lyrics from albums sold by Interscope Records, a distributor owned in part by Time Warner.

By that time, Tucker had been joined by Bill Bennett, a conservative author best known for serving as Ronald Reagan's "drug czar." When Bennett and Tucker took their crusade to television in a commercial condemning Time Warner and other purveyors of gangsta rap, the company executives arranged for a series of private meetings. The media reports that these meetings grew heated when the executives defended the sale of gangsta rap because suppressing it would be censorship and a violation of the artists' rights under the First Amendment. In return, Tucker blistered them for "putting profit before principle." She added in People, "You can't listen to all that language and filth without it affecting you."

In a bizarre twist, Tucker was sued by Interscope Records and by Death Row Records in the autumn of 1995. The suit contended that Tucker tried to coerce rap recorder Marion Suge Knight, head of Death Row Records, to pull out of his contract with Interscope and distribute his records through a new company that Tucker herself would control. The lawsuit also charged Tucker with conspiracy, threats, extortion and bribery. Tucker insisted that the suit was nothing more than an effort to squelch her effective campaign against gangsta rap and its musicians. "I welcome my day in court," she told the Washington Post. She added, "My record speaks for itself. Their record and records speak for them."

Tucker found widespread support for her crusade among African Americans, including such notable entertainers as Dionne Warwick, Melba Moore, and activist Dick Gregory. Her support was far from unanimous, however. Supporters of gangsta rap as art accused her of being narrow–minded and of seeing the music as the root of the problem, not as a symptom of widespread anger brought on by deplorable social conditions. As Kevin Alexander Gray noted in Emerge, "When Tucker attacks rappers for racial and sexual violence and the denigration of women, she misses the point and the opportunity to do something about that violence. But rather than listen to the conditions described in gangsta rap and work to change them, Tucker is attacking the expression of those feelings." An alternative view was offered by Bakari Kitwana in The Source: "Although Tucker often goes overboard with at times blanket and inaccurate ranting and raving, the essence of her beef is reflective of a growing segment in the Black community who are against Black people participating in advancing stereotypical and demeaning portrayals of ourselves....If the hip–hop culture is to develop beyond its 'mainstream age,' the hip–hop community cannot be afraid of such criticism."

Tucker, too, wanted to see progress in hip–hop music. She wanted the artists to convey positive images, and hope, to listeners. She saw violent and misogynistic rap lyrics as a significant contribution to black–on–black violence and single–parent families, the first step, she claimed, toward racial genocide. "If corporate responsibility dictates that we protect the whales, protect the rivers and protect the environment, then the most important of all Earth's resources should be protected," she asserted in the Los Angeles Times. At a time when most women retire to a leisurely life, Tucker was still hard at work at a task she felt was God–given. "We have to try to save these children," she concluded in People. "They don't have daddies in the home, they don't have jobs, they don't have a support system. They only have us."

In September 2000, Tucker appeared on CNN's Crossfire and later on Crossfire Chat, a moderated chat room discussion on CNN.com. In response to a reader question about hip–hop music and artistic freedom, Tucker was careful to acknowledge that while artists do have a right to create works of art, "they don't have a right to stereotypically record music or do anything objectionable to any group." She went on to say, "This music has been proven injurious by psychiatric studies, so there's nothing that can be done but ask the industry to regulate itself. If not, like with cigarettes, we'll have to have government regulation. American people say they feel they're fighting the culture to save their children."

Tucker also took on American television. In 2001, speaking for the Parents Television Council, Tucker publicly deplored the "levels to which the entertainment industry has gone to market its adult–oriented material to children and teenagers," and urged TV sponsors to instead fund family–oriented programming. "Just as violent and vulgar programming — the kind that pollutes young minds and encourages them to engage in dangerous and risky behavior — is funded by advertising dollars, so too is wholesome, uplifting, family–oriented programming," she noted.

Updates: October 12, 2005: Tucker died on October 12, 2005, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was 78. Source: New York Times, November 7, 2005.

Books

• Notable Black American Women, Gale, 1994, pp. 1155–1157.

Periodicals

• Chicago Tribune, September 15, 1995, p. 8.
• Columbus Times, September 19, 1995, p. A5.
• Crossfire Chat, CNN.com. (September 11, 2000).
• Ebony, July 1972, pp. 60–62; September 1995, pp. 25–28.
• Emerge, November 1995, pp. 64–67.
• Good Housekeeping, October 1995, p. 30.
• Hyde Park Citizen, July 20, 1995, p. 3.
• Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1995, p. A1; March 20, 1996, p. A1.
• Parents Television Council, May 14, 2001. Press release.
• People, June 26, 1995, pp. 105–106.
• Richmond Afro–American, July 12, 1995, p. A10.
• The Source, November 1995, p. 22.
• Washington Afro–American, August 26, 1995, p. A3.
• Washington Post, November 29, 1995, p. C1.

Source

Contemporary Black Biography. Vol. 12. Gale.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Gale.