NOTEWORTHY DEATHS

Activist, mayor of Mississippi’s Jackson

JACKSON, Miss. - Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, a human-rights activist and nationally prominent attorney who as city leader persuaded voters to accept a sales tax to fix crumbling infrastructure in Mississippi’s capital, died Tuesday. He was 66.

Officials said Lumumba, a Democrat, died at a Jackson hospital. A cause of death wasn’t immediately clear.

As an attorney, Lumumba represented Tupac Shakur in cases including one in which the rapper was cleared of aggravated assault in the shootings of two off-duty police officers who were visiting Atlanta from another city when they were wounded. Shakur died in 1996.

In 2011, Lumumba persuaded then-Gov. Haley Barbour to release sisters Jamie Scott and Gladys Scott from a Mississippi prison after they served 16 years for an armed robbery they said they didn’t commit. Barbour suspended their life sentences but didn’t pardon them.

Lumumba served one term on the Jackson City Council and was sworn in as mayor in July. He persuaded voters to pass a referendum in January to add a 1 percent local sales tax to help pay for improvements to crumbling roads and an aging water and sewer system.

City Council President Charles Tillman has become acting mayor, and the council will set a nonpartisan special election to choose a new mayor.

Lumumba was involved with the Republic of New Afrika in the 1970s and ’80s. He said in 2013 that the group had advocated “an independent predominantly black government” in the southeastern United States. Lumumba was vice president of the group during part of his stint. The group also advocated reparations for slavery and was watched by an FBI counterintelligence operation.

Spain’s swift-fingered flamenco guitarist

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MADRID - Paco de Lucia, one of the world’s greatest guitarists who dazzled audiences with his lightning-speed flamenco rhythms and finger work, has died in Mexico, Spanish officials said Wednesday. He was 66.

De Lucia had a heart attack while on vacation at the Caribbean beach resort of Playa del Carmen and was taken to a hospital where he died, Quintana Roo state Attorney General Gaspar Armando Garcia told Mexico’s Enfoque Radio.

A spokesman for the southern Spanish city of Algeciras, where de Lucia grew up and maintained strong ties, said he had several houses, including one in Mexico. She spoke on condition of anonymity because regulations did not allow her to be identified publicly.

De Lucia - whose real name was Francisco Sanchez Gomez - was best-known for flamenco but also experimented with other genres of music. One of his most famous recordings was Friday Night in San Francisco, recorded with fellow guitarists John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola in 1981.

During the 1960s and 1970s, he formed an extremely popular duo with late flamenco singer legend Camaron de la Isla, with the two working together on 10 records.

Arguably the most influential flamenco artist ever, he infused new life into the traditional art form and is credited with modernizing it by introducing influences from other musical forms such as jazz, bossa nova, classical and salsa.

In 1995 he played with Bryan Adams on the song “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman.”

Arkansas, Pages 12 on 02/27/2014

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