May 09, 1997
The Rev. James Melvin Washington, 49, an expert on black American religious history, died Saturday after suffering a stroke in New York. Dr. Washington taught at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va., for more than 20 years.
The lecturer and preacher also edited "Conversations with God: Two Centuries of Prayers by African-Americans." He once said that reading such prayers was a way to recover the "spiritual disciplines that sustained my people through slavery, Jim and Jane Crowism and the civil rights movement."
Sydney J. Freedberg, 82, a former chief curator of the National Gallery of Art in Washington and an art historian who taught at Harvard for nearly three decades, died Tuesday in Washington. He was best known for his survey, "Painting in Italy: 1500-1600," published in 1971 and reissued several times.
Gilbert Green, 90, a Communist Party leader who once was imprisoned for advocating the overthrow of the United States government, died of cancer Sunday in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Keith R. Porter, 84, who first devised a way to photograph tissue cells with an electron microscope, died May 2 in Bryn Mawr, Pa. A half-century ago, he developed a method of magnifying cells that is used today by biologists studying cell growth and division. His first photograph of a magnified chick cell, he once said, "became the most micrographed cell in history."
Eugene Vale, 81, author of the novel "The 13th Apostle," died May 2 in Los Angeles. Mr. Vale's 1959 book was a best seller for more than 30 weeks.
Pub Date: 5/09/97
