Former Boston NAACP head passes away at 91

Banner Staff

When his mother died in 1926, leaving behind a husband and six children between the ages of 8 and 21, Herbert E. Tucker Jr. was 11 years old.  Behind him was the great flu epidemic of 1918, World War I and the year Red Sox first won the American League pennant. Facing him were fierce discrimination, the Depression, a most distinguished life of public service and, most importantly, a happy family life.

Tucker died March 1 at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. He was 91. His wife of 70 years, Mary (Hill) Tucker, and his daughters Gwendolyn T. Wharton and Gretchen Tucker Underwood were at his side.

Born in Boston on Aug. 30, 1915, Tucker said that as a youngster he delivered newspapers with Frank and Otto Snowden.

“Frank would often give me rides on his bike — he had one and I never did — to Latin School,” Tucker said recently, remembering his old friend who died in Washington, D.C. just two weeks before his own death.

Tucker graduated from Boston Latin School, and later from Northeastern University School of Law. To pay for his tuition and to put money in the family pot while in law school, he worked at any job he could get — digging trenches for the Works Progress Administration, carrying bags at South Station like his father before him and serving as a postal clerk.

After completing his law degree, Tucker was hired by the Internal Revenue Service as a revenue agent in 1943. He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1947, but remained with the IRS until 1952, when he established a private practice with Antonio Cardozo. Cardozo & Tucker was the first black law firm in all of Massachusetts.

Throughout the 1950s, Tucker sat on the executive committee of the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, including a four-year stint as president from 1955 to 1959. Also in 1959, Tucker was named assistant attorney general of the state of Massachusetts, a position he held for nine years.

In his dual capacities as head of the Boston NAACP and assistant attorney general of the Commonwealth, Tucker sought a probe of the Boston Red Sox resulting from the organization’s decision to release their only African American player — a choice Tucker described as emblematic of an ongoing pattern of discrimination.

It was during these turbulent times that Tucker worked with Boston civil rights activists Ruth Batson, Paul Parks and Otto and Muriel Snowden of Freedom House and many others to insure that all Boston Public Schools were available to all Boston children, regardless of race or ethnicity.

In 1960, Tucker was appointed by Sen. John F. Kennedy to the civil rights section of his 1960 presidential campaign; after his inauguration the following year, President Kennedy appointed Tucker special ambassador to the Independence Celebration of the Republic of Gabon in Africa.

In 1969, Tucker became commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities and was named chairman in 1972. The following year, Tucker was named special justice to the Municipal Court of Dorchester, and in 1974 he became the presiding justice of the district. Leaving Dorchester, Tucker became the presiding judge of the Edgartown District Court in 1979, where he remained until his retirement in 1985. For much of his career, Tucker was also a lecturer at several universities, including Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern University and Harvard College.

“I learned a lot from Herb Tucker, and will always be grateful to him for the wisdom he shared and his many personal kindnesses,” said former U.S. Attorney Wayne E. Budd, one of many young attorneys Tucker mentored.

Former New York gubernatorial candidate Carl McCall recalls Tucker as a young man “who managed to keep order in my third-grade Sunday school class at St. Mark’s Church on Humboldt Avenue in Roxbury.”

Tucker was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity, served as grand basileus of the organization from 1955 to 1958 and acting as a trustee in the fraternity since 1969 — the same year he became chairman of the executive committee of Simmons College. He sat on the board of WGBH, was a master of the Mt. Zion chapter of Prince Hall Masons and a lifelong member of the congregation at Grace Episcopal Church. His alma mater, Northeastern University, named him the alumnus of the year in 1971.

Tucker leaves his wife, Mary; his two daughters, Gwendolyn and Gretchen; his grandchildren, Gretchen Mercer and Richard G. Wharton Jr.; two great-grandsons, Jason and Brandon Mercer, as well as a host of nieces and nephews, family and friends.

A service will be held at Grace Episcopal Church in Vineyard Haven on Saturday, March 10 at 1 pm. In lieu of flowers, donations in Tucker’s name may be made to Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.