CHICAGO -- A funeral will be held Friday for James Kemp, national president of the NAACP and a civil rights advocate for a half century.
Kemp died Monday in his home on the Southwest Side, apparently of a heart attack.
He was 71.
A native of Muskogee, Okla., Kemp's activist career spanned nearly 50 years. It began in the 1930s when he owned a South Side newsstand and helped in the sometimes violent struggle to organize fellow dealers.
It culminated with his elevation this year to the NAACP presidency.
Kemp graduated from John Marshall Law School in 1940 and worked for Service Employees International Local 189, representing unskilled workers such as dock laborers, furniture store janitors and drugstore porters.
He served more than 20 years on the executive board of the Chicago Federation of Labor and is past president of the Building Service Joint Council No. 1.
'He was a tower of strength in the Chicago area labor and civil rights movements,' said Chicago Federation of Labor President William Lee.
'He organized people at the very lowest level of the economy and brought them decent wages and working conditions. He was a very witty, articulate and well-informed speaker on labor, civil rights and politics.
The late Mayor Richard J. Daley in 1974 appointed Kemp as one of the initial members of the Regional Transportation Authority board.
The battle to organize newsstand dealers sometimes involved baseball bats before Kemp initiated negotiations, said Louis Alexander, Amalgamated Bank vice president and a college friend of Kemp.
Kemp is survived by his wife, Maida, a labor organizer and historian, a daughter and three granddaughters.
