C. Delores Tucker(1927-2005)

C. Delores Tucker, once one of the highest ranking African-American women in state government, as well as being nationally known as a stalwart opponent of gangsta rap, was born in Philadelphia, the tenth of eleven children of a Bahamian-born Baptist minister and his "Christian feminist" wife who operated a grocery, an employment agency and a real estate business. After attending Temple University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, she married the owner of a construction company who also owned several parcels of real estate in and around the Philadelphia area; she sold real estate and insurance and was active in local Democratic politics, eventually being known as an accomplished fund raiser and public speaker. In 1971, Pennsylvania Governor Milton J. Shapp named Mrs. Tucker as Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; however, six years later, she was fired from her position due to allegations that she used state employees to write political speeches for which she was paid. Subsequent attempts to be elected to political office--Lieutanant Governor; a Congressional seat; the United States Senate--went all for naught. Mrs. Tucker turned her attentions to community activities, working with underprivileged youth both in Philadelphia and on the national scene, and working to heighten the involvement of African American women in politics--she helped to found the National Congress of Black Women in 1984, and for eleven years, she served as the chairman of the National Black Caucus of the Democratic Party. However, despite her accomplishments, Mrs. Tucker will probably be best known for her strident opposition to gangsta rap and those who both wrote, performed, and produced them, particularly Tupac Shakur and the president of Death Row Records, Marion "Suge" Knight, both of whom she challenged in court. She first became involved with it when a niece she was raising was ostracized for using offensive language found in one of the songs. Mrs. Tucker found that the lyrics emphasized and glorified the degradation of women and violence in general. She targeted Time Warner, bought shares of stock in the company, and appeared at stockholders' meetings to deliver speeches against their involvement with the purveyors of gangsta rap, particularly Death Row Records. Although she counted Time Warner's sale of its 50% share in Interscope, the distributor of Death Row Records, as a victory, Shakur, in one of his songs, rhymed her name with an obscenity. A subsequent lawsuit against Shakur's estate in 1996, claiming defamation and loss of consortium was subsequently dismissed.