By WOLFGANG SAXON (NYT) 765 words,  New York Times

 

Edward R. Dudley, a retired New York judge and former borough president of Manhattan whose manifold career took him from civil rights advocacy to an ambassadorship in Africa, died on Tuesday at St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan. He was 93 and lived in Harlem.

 

The cause was prostate cancer, his family said.

He also was a teacher, a lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P., a Democratic county chairman and the first African-American to run for statewide office on a major-party ticket in New York. (He was the Democratic-Liberal candidate for attorney general in 1962 but was beaten by the incumbent Republican, Louis J. Lefkowitz.)

Edward Richard Dudley was the son of a dentist in South Boston, Va. During his student years he worked as a bellhop, waiter and real estate clerk in an uncle's office, enrolling as a pre-dental student at Johnson C. Smith College in North Carolina and graduating in 1932 with a B.S. degree.

He taught black children in a one-room school in Virginia and, as he recalled later, soon learned about discrimination in pay. His salary came to $60 a month. White teachers got $115.

After a year at Howard University on a scholarship in dentistry, he moved north and became close to his politically connected uncle, Edward A. Johnson, a real estate developer. He worked odd jobs and signed on with a public works theater project, serving as stage manager for its unit director, the young Orson Welles. The experience may have led to the deep-voiced, deliberate and somewhat dramatic manner of speech of his later career.

After the theater project ended in 1938, he enrolled in law school at St. John's University, received an L.L.B. in 1941 and went into private practice for a brief time.

Encouraged by his family connection, he joined the Carver Democratic Club in Harlem. He became a precinct activist and got a job as an assistant state attorney general that ended when Thomas E. Dewey was elected governor in 1942.

Mr. Dudley went to work for the growing Pepsi-Cola company, drumming up sales at Army camps. Thurgood Marshall, the future Supreme Court justice, persuaded him to join the N.A.A.C.P. legal team in 1943. As an assistant special counsel, he wrote briefs and prepared cases seeking the admission of black students to Southern colleges, equal pay for black teachers and an end to discrimination in public transportation.

He was executive assistant to the governor of the Virgin Islands from 1945 to 1947 and then spent five years as President Harry S. Truman's ambassador to Liberia. It was a key diplomatic post in Africa; he also helped oversee Truman's Point Four program of economic assistance for third world countries.

Returning home in 1953, he practiced law and directed the N.A.A.C.P.'s Freedom Fund. In 1955, Mayor Robert F. Wagner appointed him a justice on the Domestic Relations Court.

He resigned in 1961 when he was elected by the City Council to serve as Manhattan borough president, after a fellow Harlemite, Hulan E. Jack, had to quit the position amid a conflict of interest scandal. Mr. Dudley served the remainder of Mr. Jack's term, and he won election to the post later that year.

As borough president he made moderate-cost housing a priority, to keep the taxpaying middle class in the city. At the same time, he headed the New York County Democratic Committee.

He left the borough presidency at the end of 1964 after winning election to a vacancy on the State Supreme Court. He was re-elected in 1978 and served past the usual retirement age, until 1985. Beginning in 1967, he was administrative judge of the Criminal Court of the City of New York. In 1970, he became administrative judge of State Supreme Court for Manhattan and the Bronx.

Mr. Dudley is survived by his wife of 63 years, Rae Oley Dudley; a son, Edward R. Jr. of Scarsdale, N.Y.; two brothers, Dr. Calmeze Dudley of Los Angeles and Dr. Hubert Dudley of Chicago; and three grandchildren.
Mayor Robert F. Wagner in 1961. He served until the end of 1964. (Photo by Arthur Brower/The New York Times)