Civil rights activist, 85
“The phrase ‘too old” doesn’t exist.”
Sherwood Ross lived that.
At 72, Ross was not only taking guitar classes at Miami Dade College, but was also running and jogging several miles on the beach each day to stay fit, he told the Miami Herald in 2005.
Ross, 85, died June 21 as a result of complications from a brain injury two years ago. He was walking to the gym in July 2016 when he fainted from the heat. The fall caused a brain bleed that left him in a coma for 30 days, which he survived but never fully recovered.
No matter his age, Ross wanted to use his time productively and in the interest of social justice and peace. When asked by his son, Karl Ross, to watch an episode of “The Wire,” the elder Ross, then in his 80s, would decline, then to go to his room and write.
“He would write a blog or article about whatever atrocities or injustices might be occurring — whether U.S. drone strikes killing civilians overseas or political issues here at home,” Karl Ross said in an interview last week.
Activism was his father’s passion. Sherwood Ross was best known for his involvement in James Meredith’s “March Against Fear” to promote black voter registration in rural Mississippi in June 1966.
Ross, a 33-year-old radio newsman at the time, was at the White House Conference on Civil Rights when he attended Meredith’s news conference and offered to serve as his press coordinator.
On the second day of the march, which started in Memphis and ended in Jackson, Meredith was shot while walking in Hernando, Mississippi. Sherwood was captured tending to the injured Meredith, and accompanied him to the hospital.
Meredith, best known as the first black student to attend the University of Missiissippi in 1962, was able to finish the march in Jackson after being treated for his wounds.
A Chicago native, Ross moved to Miami with his family as a teenager and graduated from Miami Senior High School. He briefly joined the U.S. Air Force before attending the University of Miami in the early 1950s.
He graduated from UM with a degree in race relations. After a stint in news, Ross became involved with the National Urban League, after being inspired by activist Saul Alinsky.
Ross became a speechwriter and a columnist with the Urban League, then went on to become a talk show host at WOL Radio/1450 AM, the leading black radio station in D.C.
Ross took an interest in arts later in his life, becoming a fixture in local pubs and the Miami arts community. He joined South Florida poetry and songwriting circles, and wrote a song called “I Sliced Pastrami for the CIA and Found God.”