June Jordan, 65, a poet, activist and one of America's most prolific black writers, died Friday of breast cancer at her home in Berkeley, Calif. Prolific and versatile, with passions ranging from feminism to race to teaching, Ms. Jordan was among the most-published of black writers.
Born in Harlem, N.Y., to West Indian immigrants, she began writing poetry early in life and became involved in the civil rights movement while a student at Barnard College. Ms. Jordan was a professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she began teaching in 1989. She published 28 books, including several volumes of poetry, political essays and children's fiction. Her final book of essays, Some of Us Did Not Die, is scheduled to be published in September. Her memoir Soldier, A Poet's Childhood was published in 1999.
In a statement issued when that memoir was published, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison praised Ms. Jordan's "40 years of activism fueled by flawless art." Ms. Jordan also wrote the libretto for the opera I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky.
Phyllis Bober, 81, a professor emerita at Bryn Mawr College who specialized in Renaissance art, died of cancer May 30 at her home in Ardmore, Pa.
Ms. Bober, who was trained in archaeology at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, considered The Census of Classical Works Known to the Renaissance her most significant work. The project became the standard resource on Renaissance art, the subject that she pursued for most of her career.
She had diverse interests, including Roman provincial sculpture, the history of collecting and antiquarianism, and the story of culture and cooking. In her 1999 book Art, Culture and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy she discussed the connections between food and art from prehistory through the Gothic period.
Ruby Tiger Osceola, 106, the oldest living Florida Seminole Indian and matriarch of the tribe's Tampa reservation, died Thursday. Mrs. Osceola presided over a family of more than 100 children and grandchildren. Tribe members credited her with keeping their customs alive and teaching them to each new generation.
Born in the Florida Everglades, Mrs. Osceola later lived in Bradenton and moved to a 9-acre reservation in Tampa in 1980. She moved 17 members of her family from Bradenton to help start the reservation. Today nearly 200 Seminoles live on or near the site.
She dedicated her life to teaching Seminole culture to her descendants, which include seven children, 31 grandchildren, 59 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren.
Guilford Dudley Jr., 94, former U.S. ambassador to Denmark and a consultant to President Richard M. Nixon, died Thursday at his Nashville home.
While serving as ambassador from 1969 to 1971, Mr. Dudley was decorated with the Grand Cross of Dannebrog, the greatest national honor that can be bestowed on a non-Dane. He resigned his diplomatic post in 1971 to accept an assignment as Mr. Nixon's economic consultant.
A prominent figure in Tennessee Republican circles and the son of one of the founders of Life and Casualty Insurance Co., Mr. Dudley began as an insurance agent with the company in 1931 and worked his way up, serving as president from 1952 to 1969. He also served as president of WTVF-TV in Nashville and was a Navy officer in World War II.
Frank C. Hibben, 91, a retired University of New Mexico anthropology professor known for his excavations and penchant for big-game hunting, died Tuesday at his home in Albuquerque, N.M. Mr. Hibben was perhaps best known for excavating Sandia Man cave in the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque in 1937 and 1941. The cave was discovered by a University of New Mexico student in 1936.
Mr. Hibben was the first director of what is now the university's Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. He also was a big-game hunter and world traveler who amassed a large collection of archaeological treasures he willed to the university. He donated $4 million to build the Hibben Center, a research annex to Maxwell Museum that is nearing completion.
Mr. Hibben wrote The Lost Americans, Treasure in the Dust, Digging Up America, and other books and articles for scholarly and general-interest magazines.
R.W.B. Lewis, 84, a literary critic and Pulitzer-winning biographer, died Thursday at home in Bethany, Conn. Mr. Lewis won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for Edith Wharton: A Biography. The book, which revived interest in Wharton, also won the Bancroft Prize for American History and the first National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction.
A professor at Yale University from 1959 to 1988, Mr. Lewis taught English and American studies and was a popular lecturer. His first book, The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy and Tradition in the 19th Century (1955), became a seminal work in the emerging discipline of American studies.
His other books include Trials of the Word (1965), The Poetry of Hart Crane (1967) and The Jameses: A Family Narrative (1991), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He and two colleagues edited an influential textbook, American Literature, The Makers and the Making (1973), which was one of the first of its kind to include works by American Indian, female and black writers.