By Michael Hemphill |
Outside his hometown of Roanoke, Edward R. Dudley lived a life of a civil rights hero.
Special assistant counsel to Thurgood Marshall at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.
First African American to run for statewide office in New York on the ticket of a major party.
First African American to serve as an administrative judge in New York State.
And most prominent: first African American U.S. ambassador.
Never miss a story. Sign up for Cardinal’s free daily newsletter.
But within Roanoke? “He’s such a brilliant guy, my dad,” lamented his 81-year-old son, Edward Dudley Jr. “But nobody knows about him.”
Until now.
Thanks to the efforts of a white minister, whose passion for local history rivals his Sunday sermons, Dudley’s legacy will soon be commemorated on a historical marker near his childhood home in Roanoke’s Gainsboro neighborhood.
Nelson Harris. Photo by Randy Walker.
“We often forget a lot of local history because it’s not taught in school,” said Nelson Harris, former Roanoke mayor, pastor of Heights Community Church and avid historian. “The more we can know about our locality and the events and the individuals and the institutions that have been part of our history, the better we’ll be. The story of Edward Dudley is inspirational and aspirational, and I think we need to be reminded through this marker that we had tremendous individuals who grew up in Gainsboro and went on to national prominence.”
His father a dentist and his mother a teacher, Dudley can’t be considered “born and raised” in Roanoke because his mother went into labor in 1911 while traveling back from visiting family in North Carolina, said Harris. His impending birth precipitated an emergency detour to South Boston.
Back in Roanoke, Dudley grew up on Gilmer Avenue next door to another future civil rights icon, Oliver Hill, and eventually graduated from segregated Lucy Addison High School.
