The R&B giant was gay, black and out to the max; he was also a father and a man of faith
READ MOREObrie Smith, Jr. was born on November 24, 1940, in St. Louis, Mo. He was peacefully called home by our Heavenly Father on Monday, April 27, 2020.
READ MOREThis 2019 photo provided by Augusta Films, shows Richard Sobol in a still from the documentary "A Crime on the Bayou." (Augusta Films. A Crime on the Bayou via AP)
Richard Sobol arrived in Louisiana in 1966 as a volunteer for the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee. Sobol said that assignment saw him enter "a new world from which I have never returned."
READ MOREHerbert Lee Amerson, a long time Portland resident, leader and community activist passed Monday, March 1, 2020 with family by his side
READ MOREThis May 8, 1997 file photo shows Publisher and CEO of Black Enterprise Magazine Earl G. Graves Sr. in New York. Graves Sr., who championed black businesses as the founder of the first African American-owned magazine focusing on black entrepreneurs, has died. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
Graves was as the founder of the first African American-owned magazine focusing on Black entrepreneurs
READ MOREArlene Schnitzer gave away more than $150 million to thousands of civic projects in Portland and helped bring arts in the city to another level
READ MOREThis April 28, 2019, file photo, shows Ellis Marsalis during the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Sophia Germer, File)
Ellis Marsalis Jr., the jazz pianist, teacher and patriarch of a New Orleans musical clan, died late Wednesday from pneumonia brought on by the new coronavirus
READ MOREPresident Barack Obama presents a 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery in the East Room of the the White House in Washington, Aug. 12, 2009). Lowery, a veteran civil rights leader who helped the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and fought against racial discrimination, died Friday, March 27, 2020, a family statement said. He was 98. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
The founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Rev Joseph Lowery was a powerful preacher and orator
READ MOREBishop Wells died March 14, 2020, at his home surrounded by Mother Mattie Wells and his family. Due to the recent Oregon State executive order, the public viewing scheduled for Saturday, March 28, 2020, will no longer be held.
READ MOREThis July 6, 2017 file photo shows pianist McCoy Tyner after performing at the botanical Garden Citta' Studi, in Milan, Italy. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, FIle)
McCoy Tyner, groundbreaking and influential jazz pianist, was the last surviving member of the John Coltrane Quartet
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