By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. (Kathy Wray Coleman is a 22-year investigative and political journalist and legal reporter who trained for 17 years under six different editors, including Connie Harper, at the Call and Post Newspaper
CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio- Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper, remembers Call and Post Newspaper associate publisher and editor Constance "Connie" Harper (pictured), who was Black, on the one- year anniversary of her death.
Harper fought all of her adult life for Black people, and for civil and human rights. (Editor's note: The Call and Post Newspaper is a longstanding Black print weekly with distributions in the Ohio cities of Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland. It is published by internationally known boxing promoter Don King, a Cleveland native who has owned and operated the newspaper since 1998. Kenneth Miller is its current president and local Cleveland attorney George L. Forbes, a former Cleveland NAACP president and former longtime president of Cleveland City Council, is its general counsel).
Harper, of Shaker Heights, who would have turned 83 on Oct 28 of this year, died on October. 24, 2014 at a Dayton, Ohio hospital of heart trouble, and after falling ill the prior Sunday following the the homecoming activities of her Alma mater, Central State University. She was the Cleveland alumni chapter president of CSU.
State Rep. Bill Patmon (D-10), a Cleveland Democrat who represents Ohio's 10th state district, remembered her as " a community icon that is irreplaceable."
Funeral services were at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church on Cleveland's east side, with the articulate Rev Dr. Jawanza Colvin delivering the eulogy, a home-going service supported by hundreds, if not thousands, including dignitaries, Black clergy, media personalities, community activists, and local journalists.
“Connie Harper was not only a legend in Cleveland journalism, she was a fierce Civil Rights advocate and leader," said Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) at the funeral
"The loss of Connie Harper will be felt throughout our entire community, " said three term Cleveland Mayor Jackson at the funeral. "She was more than just the Editor of the Call & Post who will be greatly missed."
Born and raised in Cleveland, Harper graduated from John Adams High School and went on to earn a bachelor's degree in elementary education from CSU, where she was the editor of the student newspaper. She was the youngest of five female siblings, two of them deceased and one of them of whom is retired Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals judge Sara J. Harper. She was a major voice in Cleveland's African American community since the early 1960s. That's when she began writing for the paper and eventually became the editor under the late Call and Post publisher W.O. Walker. She also hosted a talk show on WJMO, a local radio station.
She was a former elementary school teacher for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District and later worked in the international boxing arena promoting fights as vice president for Don King Productions, a boxing promotion company owned and operated by King. She worked for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections before rejoining the Call and Post in 1998 when King became owner and publisher.
Though registered Black Republicans, Harper, as editor, and King, as publisher, were the first of the more the 215 African-American newspapers of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) to endorse Barack Obama, who went on to become America's first Black president.
Harper was a member of the Old Black Political Guard, and was among those that helped to elect the late Carl B. Stokes as mayor of Cleveland in 1967, the first Black mayor of a major American city. She grew up partly in a federally-funded housing project on Cleveland's largely Black east side near where King and the Stokes brothers lived. (Editor's note: Louis Stokes, Carl Stokes' older brother and only sibling who died earlier year, ultimately became the first Black in Congress from Ohio, a post now held by 11th Congressional District Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge).
Connie Harper received numerous awards and commendations, and in 2010 accepted the Thomas Morgan III Award for AIDS/HIV awareness from the Atlanta based Center for Disease Control and the California-based Black AIDS Institute for the Call and Post. She was honored last year by the Cleveland Chapter of 100 Black Men and the Cleveland Press Club, also last year, inducted her into its journalism hall of fame, along with four others, including former Cleveland Fox 8 News anchor Wilma Smith, and 19 Action News Reporter Paul Orlousky.
(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)
