Leon Sullivan
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient (1922–2001)
Leon Howard Sullivan (October 16, 1922 – April 24, 2001) was a Baptist minister, a civil rights leader and social activist focusing on the creation of job training opportunities for African Americans, a longtime General Motors Board Member, and an anti-Apartheid activist. Sullivan died of leukemia in a Scottsdale, Arizona hospital at the age of 78.
Early life
Born to Charles and Helen Sullivan in Charleston, West Virginia, he was raised in a small house on a dirt alley called Washington Court--one of Charleston's poorest communities. His parents divorced when he was three years old and he grew up an only child. At the age of twelve, he tried to purchase a Coca-Cola in a drugstore on Capitol Street. The proprietor refused to sell him the drink saying: "Stand on your feet, boy. You can't sit here." This incident inspired Sullivan's lifetime pursuit of fighting racial prejudice.
Sullivan also attributed much of his early influence to his grandmother:
... my grandmother Carrie, a constant and powerful presence in my life who taught me early on the importance of faith, determination, faith in God, and especially self-help.
As a teenager, Sullivan — who as an adult stood 6 ft 5 in tall — attended Garnet High School, a school for African Americans in Charleston, West Virginia.
“Leon Sullivan” enters the record as presidential Medal of Freedom recipient (1922–2001). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Leon, Sullivan and Presidential can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Leon Sullivan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.