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DAYTONA BEACH - Former Florida NAACP president Charles Cherry died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer. He was 76.
Cherry was involved in civil rights activities most of his life and led both local and state chapters of the NAACP.
He was a current Daytona Beach city commissioner, was publisher of the Daytona Times, a weekly newspaper focusing on blacks, and owned radio station WPUL-AM.
"He stayed true to his mission to the end," said his son, Charles W. Cherry II. "... to improve the lives of underprivileged and low income."
The Americus, Ga., native earned degrees in business administration and mathematics from Morehouse College, where Martin Luther King Jr. was a classmate.
He moved to Daytona Beach in 1952 and became active in the civil rights movement, participating in sit-ins and other efforts in the 1960s to bring about integration.
He became president of the Volusia County branch of the NAACP in 1971, was president of the state NAACP from 1974 to 1984, and later headed the local chapter again. He served on the NAACP's national board for 12 years starting in 1977.
Cherry continued at the paper and on the commission despite the cancer diagnosis earlier this year and heart bypass surgery in April.