This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Obituary Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/1ME.2ACEB/1954 Message Board Post: Civil rights advocate Omar C. Blair, the first African-American president of the Denver Board of Education, died March 25 of complications from a stroke. He was 85. City leaders remembered Mr. Blair as a champion of education for all children regardless of their socio-economic level. " Omar was a giant within the community, and a giant in anything he did, " said former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, who last year proposed naming the Blair-Caldwell African-American Research Library in honor of Mr. Blair and Elvin Caldwell, the first black Denver City Council member. Mr. Blair grew up in Denver during the 1920s, when the local Ku Klux Klan helped engineer the elections of Denver Mayor Ben Stapleton, and Colorado Gov. Clarence Morley, who kept black residents firmly at the bottom of the social structure. Rachel Noel, the first African-American to serve on the Denver Public Schools ' Board of Education, persuaded Mr. Blair to run for the school board. With Noel ' s help and that of other Denver desegregation advocates, Mr. Blair was elected to the board of education in 1973. He served for the next 12 years, including eight years as the president of an often bitterly contentious board. The source of that contention was a 1970 court order that required the busing of Denver children to racially balance Denver schools. When court-ordered busing ended in 1995, Mr. Blair philosophically told The Denver Post that busing had " gone on long enough. Lord knows we did what we could to make it work. " Recalling his years on the school board, Mr. Blair liked to tell listeners that while others were bickering about busing, he and his pro-busing colleagues on the board quietly went about bringing Denver schools into a new era. Under his direction, Denver schools got computers and a career education center. Mr. Blair named a new middle school for civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and a northeast Denver elementary school, Marrama, in honor of a school custodian who was dying of cancer. When a man protested Mr. Blair ' s decision to name the school after King, Mr. Blair eloquently dressed him down. " Do you think it ' s equally important to name a school after a custodian which is an honorable profession as opposed to a Nobel Peace Prize winner having a school named after him? " Mr. Blair asked evenly. Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune on 4/14/2004. (volunteer submission)