North Texas civil rights leader Lee Alcorn died this week at the age of 89, leaving behind a decades-long legacy of advocacy in Grand Prairie and across the region..<\/p>\n
Alcorn became involved in civil rights activism in the 1980s and later founded Grand Prairie’s first chapter of the NAACP, serving as one of the city’s most recognizable advocates for racial justice.<\/p>\n
Supporters credit his work with helping spur the removal of the Confederate flag from South Grand Prairie High School and leading protests following a deadly police shooting in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
“We lost a legend,” said Kyev Tatum, community leader and pastor at New Mount Rose Missionary Baptist Church.<\/p>\n
Tatum said Alcorn was a steady presence during some of the community’s most difficult moments.<\/p>\n
“Whenever you had a big crisis on your hands, and you need to deal with it,” Tatum said, “you want Lee somewhere around the front of that discussion.<\/p>\n
Alcorn’s career also included controversy. In 2000, he resigned from a leadership position with the Dallas NAACP after making anti-Semitic remarks about then-vice presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman.<\/p>\n
Even after stepping away from that role, Alcorn remained active in civil rights work for years, continuing to advocate for his community until declining health slowed him.<\/p>\n
For Tatum, Alcorn’s lasting legacy lies in the guidance and leadership he provided to generations of activists.<\/p>\n
“The right words to tell you to keep your head in the game,” said Tatum, ” the last 20 years, he\u2019s been on our corner man.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Texas civil rights leader Lee Alcorn died this week at the age of 89, leaving behind a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,1279],"class_list":["post-392782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-grand-prairie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}