If area residents, and especially area blacks, know the name of James R. Mapp only for his 26-year lawsuit to desegregate Chattanooga’s city school system, they’ve missed a lot.
The area civil rights leader, who died Friday, fought at the federal, state and local levels for better opportunities for black people for most of his 87 years.
Mapp was flat wrong in a few of the efforts, tilted at windmills in some and wasn’t successful in others, but he never stopped trying. So focused was he on his efforts, though, that he agreed to serve another term (of several) as president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) when he was in his late 80s – when no one else would step up.
Read more
Chattanooga’s James Mapp, civil rights leader for all, has died
Just a few of the causes he fought for: more black employees in the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department (1966), black employees in the local U.S. District Court (1972), school busing (1972), change in city government election structure (1974), patient conditions at Erlanger hospital (1974), open housing policies (1974), more blacks in Hamilton County Schools administration (1975), more black hiring in urban planning (1977), better conditions in state welfare policies (1977), help for the poor on utility bills (1978), more black hiring at the Tennessee Valley Authority (1979), business owners on then-East Ninth Street in the wake of urban renewal plans (1980), help for the poor on water bills (1982), a then-second majority black Hamilton County state House district (1991), ongoing changes at Howard High School (2004) and the distribution of payments in lieu of taxes for area developers (2014).