William “Bill” Lucy

Beautiful Are the Feet of Mr. William “Bill” Lucy
A Tribute to “A Man!”
A Tribute to THE Man
The Man Who Coined the Freedom Cry, “I Am a Man” and Shaped the Policies, Programs, and Movements that Defined “A Man”
Sunrise: November 26, 1933- Sunset: September 25, 2024
By Dr. Lezli Baskerville, President & CEO
National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO)
Revised and Re-released, October 2024

Beautiful are the feet of William L. Lucy because he dedicated his life to spreading Good News to God’s little ones: those in the dawn of life, our children; those in the sunset of life, our seniors; those in the margins of life, the 7 out of 10 middle-Americans living paycheck to paycheck, the 16 million Americans who are unemployed, seeking employment, and underemployed; the 45 million Americans lacking health insurance; the 60% of African American boys who are being left behind in high school, the nearly 5,000 African American men per 100,000 residents, who are in the American justice system , and others of our Brothers and Sisters who are lost, fallen, left behind, locked up or infirm–those who we call the least of these.

Beautiful are the feet of Bill Lucy and magnificent was this mighty man of faith, caring, courage, vision, discipline, rectitude, humility and action focused on results. His walk and work aligned with the movements for civil rights, workers rights, social justice, economic justice, environmental justice, peace, international human rights and ecumenism at home and abroad. Bill Lucy’s imprimatur can be found on every contemporary movement for freedom and justice, including the National Black Leadership Roundtable (NBLR) where, during my tenure as founding Executive Director the CBC national advocacy network, Mr. Lucy served as a member of my board of directs and offered sage advice on the collaborative efforts at wealth building and family-building among and between of the CEOs of 350 national black organizations.

In the nearly four decades I was privileged to work with Mr. Lucy on projects, policies, and movements for jobs, peace, and justice, for fair wages for workers, for job safety, to Free South Africa, to make Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday a national holiday, to help design and implement the Black Leadership Family Plan, to extend and expand the Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, Fair Housing Act, on other policy campaigns and several political campaigns; and to help to rebuild New Orleans in Katrina’s aftermath, I got to know Bill Lucy not only as “A Man,” but as “THE Man.”

After spending a week in Memphis with HBCU and PBI students, faculty and staff teaching about the labor movement and other allied movements for economic and environmental justice, my last joint with Mr. Lucy was to plant the seed for a partnership between AFSCME and NAFEO to strengthen America’s 106 HBCUs to strengthen and grow the labor movement. Mr. Lucy understood that through these doors would come the lion’s share of African American women and men ready to be educated or trained to serve in the nation’s growth and high need positions in the workforce, equipped to meet the civic, social, political, philanthropic, ecumenical, familial and community ethos needs of today and tomorrow, and those who would disproportionately become part of the ranks of public service workforces and leaders. He also understood that through these doors would come the next foot soldiers and leaders of the labor movement, who would study and grow in these learning laboratories, and who would use their neighboring communities and residents as well as public service workforces as laboratories to spawn new and better solutions to the most challenges issues we confront, and a place to seize greater opportunities to prepare more public service workers and better prepare current public service workers to lift as they serve.

Through the doors of 2-year and 4-year, graduate and professional HBCUs and PBIs, must come and complete, a larger and more potent phalanx of men and women who under the tutelage of AFSCME, its present and past leaders and members, other labor and justice leaders, would learn how advocate, negotiate, agitate, and litigate fair and equitable labor laws, policies, and practices, and add to the growing numbers of potent voices for workers on the job, and in seats at leadership tables. Mr. Lucy, the first Black International Secretary-Treasurer, of AFSCME and the highest ranking black elected leader at that time (1972), who became Secretary Treasurer Emeritus upon stepping down, Mr. Lee Saunders, Mr. Lucy’s successor as International President, AFSCME, discussed this vision. I think Mr. Saunders shares the vision. I hope we can work toward its realization, together.

Beautiful are the feet of Bill Lucy because he was not only the driving force behind the above referenced movements, but he fuelled them with labor union human and financial resources, and with his wisdom and passion. Mr. Lucy was a disturber of false peace wherever it was enabling injustice to thrive. He walked circumspectly and moved mountains “with a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.”

I thank you Mr. William L. Lucy. I thank you my Brother, Friend and Leader.
“Farewell Sweet Prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,” (Hamlet)

Lezli Baskerville
President & CEO