Community Corner

Today's Pride of Bed-Stuy: Dr. Eugene T. Reed

A Freedom Rider in the Jim Crow South who pushed for integration of hotels, lunch counters and other public facilities

February 1, 2011:  Eugene Tyree Reed was born on Jan. 9, 1923, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

In 1930, his family moved to Glen Cove, where his father, Albert Edward Reed, was the first black full-time dentist on Long Island. After graduating from Howard University in 1946 with a degree in dentistry, he enlisted in the Army and served in Germany, where he protested segregation in Army dental clinics.

After his discharge, he abandoned a quiet life of dentistry and joined the Babylon branch of the N.A.A.C.P. He was elected president in 1953, and then was appointed to head the state branch from 1960 to 1965.

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Dr. Reed eventually became a Freedom Rider in the South, pushing for integration of hotels, lunch counters and other public facilities. Days after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he joined an N.A.A.C.P. committee of leaders who traveled to Meridian, Mississippi, to investigate the murders of three civil rights workers – James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael H. Schwerner.

At one point during their visit, he was surrounded by a group of farmers carrying shotguns. Another participant remembered him as being the calmest man there, The New York Times reported in 1971.

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Dr. Eugene T. Reed died September 25, 2002, at his home in Amityville, N.Y. He was 79.

The cause was a heart attack. In a 1999 essay on his life, he said that his mother became active in civil rights so that her children would be spared the stinging prejudice she had known. He ended it by saying, ''It is my prayer that in 2099 there will be no more racism.''

Dr. Eugene T. Reed, we honor your memory and salute your contributions.

*Source, The New York Times, 10/02/02

Every day, throughout February, we will celebrate Black History Month by profiling those, past and present, who either were born, raised or currently reside here that have have made Bedford-Stuyvesant proud.


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