Final arrangements have been made for Ozell Sutton, a longtime Atlanta civil rights activist who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Sutton, 90, died Saturday. He was relatively unknown but influential, helping enroll nine African-American students at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957 and marching in Selma, Ala., in 1965. Three years later, he was in a Memphis hotel room adjacent to King's when the minister was assassinated.
He was also one of the first African-Americans to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps, a distinction that earned him a Congressional Gold Medal in 2012.
Alpha Phi Alpha, the fraternity for which Sutton once served as general president, will hold a service at 6 p.m. Monday in the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Chapel at Morehouse College. A funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. the next day at Cascade United Methodist Church, located at 3144 Cascade Road SW in Atlanta.
The family requested that, in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to the Ozell Sutton Endowed Scholarship, Office of the President, Philander Smith College, 900 Daisy Bates Drive, Little Rock, Ark., 72202. Sutton was a 1950 graduate of the college.
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