By Kathy Wray Coleman, Publisher, Editor-n-chief, Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper

CLEVELAND,Ohio- The memorial service for Grace Waite- Jones (pictured), a community activist and former reporter for The Call and Post Newspaper who also fought against apartheid in South Africa,  will be held on Saturday, Dec. 8, at 1 pm at Lucas Memorial Chapel, 9010 Garfield Blvd in Garfield Hts, a suburb of Cleveland.

Waite- Jones, 65, died suddenly at her home in Cleveland on Nov. 27.  The cause of her death was unknown at press time.

Waite- Jones and her twin sister Gloria were the youngest of 10 children.  In 1967 Waite Jones wed Richard E. Jones. The couple divorced in 1970.

Waite- Jones was employed in different capacities including as a Call and Post reporter in the 1970s and 1990s and briefly as its editor in the late 1990s. As a reporter for the Black press she  interviewed notables such as singer Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind and Fire group members, and the Harlem Globe Trotters. She is also a former secretary of internationally renowned boxing promoter Don King, publisher of the Call and Post which has distributions in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.

A graduate of John Adams High School in Cleveland, Waite- Jones was a community organizer on the streets of the  majority Black east side of Cleveland during the 1980s and 1990s who fought against racial injustice and bigotry against the Black community and others. In 1994 she traveled to South Africa as then the local president of TransAfrica and as a delegate for The Africa Fund to help monitor the elections process and to assist Nelson Mandela in his appointment as South African president.

Community activists said that she will be sorely missed.

"Grace was a champion in the fight for equal opportunity for our people and an asset to the Civil Rights movement locally, nationally and  abroad and we will miss her," said Abdul Quahhar, chairman of the Cleveland Chapter of The New Black Panther Party.

Waite- Jones is survived by her son, Asante (Kelli) and four brothers, Robert (Joan), Jimmy, David and Paul.

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