Utah civil rights leader James H. Gillespie died at age 88 Wednesday after a decade of illness.
Gillespie, a World War II veteran, spent 33 years as president of the NAACP's Ogden branch and a lifetime fighting for civil rights.
"A lot of us today, we aren't willing to take the risk to stand up and stand alone," said Betty Sawyer, president of the NAACP's Ogden branch. "He did so at personal risk to himself and his family."
Gillespie moved to Ogden in the 1940s, when blacks were kept out of some restaurants and swimming pools. He fought for employment rights and pushed to get minority students and teachers in Utah's colleges and universities.
When his family moved to a new home in Riverdale, someone threw a brick and a bucket of tar through the front window and put a pipe bomb in the mailbox, said Gillespie's wife, Bettye.
"There were those who believed we had no discrimination in Ogden and in Utah," Bettye Gillespie said. "And that was not true."
James Gillespie was a "gentleman's gentleman," Sawyer said, but the man was "determined and direct" when it came time to deal with elected officials and CEOs. Gillespie was always the first person to call the police if he felt an arrest was unjust, Sawyer said. Many times, bail came out of his own pocket.
"He was always working on a case of some particular incident," his wife said.
James Gillespie's fight for civil rights was never over. Vacations mostly featured stops at conventions, Bettye Gillespie said.
"We fought the good fight," she said. "Things have been getting better. It's heartwarming to see those changes. It's one less thing to have to deal with."
Late in his life, James Gillespie worried about young people picking up the mantle and continuing the fight for civil rights, Sawyer said.
"He would remind me the struggle continues every day," she said.
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