H Claude Hudson

H. Claude Hudson, a founder of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and probably the most revered black leader in Los Angeles, died Thursday in his sleep at the Hospital of the Good Samaritan. The son of slaves, Hudson became a dentist and the first black to get a degree in law from Loyola University. He was 102, and for years was known simply as "Mr. NAACP."

In the middle of the service, somewhere between the Lord's Prayer and the benediction, Elbert T. Hudson walked quietly to the front of the church and told the congregation about something that used to trouble his father. "One of the things he sometimes fretted about," Hudson said, chuckling at the memory, "was that he'd outlived all of his friends and there'd be nobody left to come to his funeral." Dr. H. Claude Hudson had nothing to worry about.

In the middle of the service, somewhere between the Lord's Prayer and the benediction, Elbert T. Hudson walked quietly to the front of the church and told the congregation about something that used to trouble his father. "One of the things he sometimes fretted about," Hudson said, chuckling at the memory, "was that he'd outlived all of his friends and there'd be nobody left to come to his funeral." Dr. H. Claude Hudson had nothing to worry about.

Marcine Shaw was 14 when she left behind the rural poverty of Beaumont, Tex., for the projects of South-Central Los Angeles. It was February, 1946, and she and her mother gave up their backwoods home for a unit in the Pueblo del Rio housing development at 55th Street and Holmes Avenue. There was no shame in being a poor black woman in a segregated housing project; Dr. H. Claude Hudson told her so. "Leaders like him helped us keep our self-esteem, our dignity.

Marcine Shaw was 14 when she left behind the rural poverty of Beaumont, Tex., for the projects of South-Central Los Angeles. It was February, 1946, and she and her mother gave up their backwoods home for a unit in the Pueblo del Rio housing development at 55th Street and Holmes Avenue. There was no shame in being a poor black woman in a segregated housing project; Dr. H. Claude Hudson told her so. "Leaders like him helped us keep our self-esteem, our dignity.

When the NAACP's conference ended here last week, civil rights leaders left behind a portrait of black men in crisis. Too many young black men, said the civil rights group, are underemployed, alternately feared and reviled, and living at risk. Now come the men of Sigma Pi Phi, a once-secret black fraternity that celebrates the professional and material success of black men.

It's tough enough to be without health insurance. But do healthcare providers have to make it even worse by treating you like a moron? Santa Monica resident Tom Wilde recently received bills from a downtown Los Angeles clinic and the L.A. County/USC Medical Center totaling almost $2,500. What exactly were the charges for? The bills didn't say. There was no itemizing of procedures and prices. No diagnosis. No treatment date. No nothing. Just a notation of "new charges" and the amount due. "They certainly wouldn't send such a bill to an insurance company," Wilde, 51, told me. "Insurance companies want to know exactly what they're paying for. " So you'd think.

H. Claude Hudson, a leader in the civil rights movement for 75 years, was honored in Los Angeles on his 100th birthday Saturday. "It's no fun being a hundred. You have a lot of aches and pains," said Hudson, who uses a walker to support his body. He was honored by 100 health workers, county officials and other guests at a party at the H. Claude Hudson Comprehensive Health Center.

A museum exhibit on oral health professionals might sound sadistic, but "The Future Is Now! African Americans in Dentistry" is a quick and painless look at a story that includes groundbreaking civil rights work along with the root canal work. Debuting at the California African American Museum, the compact but toothy touring show draws largely on material gathered by Dr. Clifton O. Dummett, author and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the USC School of Dentistry.

H. Claude Hudson, a founder of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and probably the most revered black leader in Los Angeles, died Thursday in his sleep at the Hospital of the Good Samaritan. The son of slaves, Hudson became a dentist and the first black to get a degree in law from Loyola University. He was 102, and for years was known simply as "Mr. NAACP."

The late black architect Paul Williams, who designed dozens of movie-star mansions and other buildings from the late 1920s to the mid-40s, converted an old five-and-dime in the '50s into the Broadway Federal Savings branch, which was burned to the ground during the Los Angeles riots. Some records of Williams, who was one of the founders of the bank, were also destroyed in the fire, which leveled Broadway Federal's main offices at 45th and Broadway.

What a classic dialogue Karen Hudson's two grandfathers must have carried on over the years of their friendship and shared patriarchy ("A Legend Restored," Aug. 8). H. Claude Hudson, the dentist-lawyer and civil rights activist whose assertiveness and confrontive style made him a hero among Los Angeles blacks in the first half of this century. Paul R. Williams, the gifted architect who was deferential to a fault, accommodating white clients to such an extent that he learned to draw renderings upside-down so he could sit across the table rather than next to them.