James Armstrong, 86, a civil rights foot soldier and Birmingham, Ala., barber, died Wednesday. Armstrong carried the American flag at the head of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march and in 1957 sued to integrate Birmingham schools after trying to enroll his two sons in the then all-white Graymont Elementary School. He cut hair at Armstrong Barbershop in downtown Birmingham for more than 50 years. One of his clients was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Jose Cisneros, 99, known for his vivid depictions of the people and culture of the Southwest, died on Sunday in El Paso. Cisneros, who was born in Durango, Mexico, was known for his historical pen-and-ink illustrations for magazines, books and newspapers. He was honored with a National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush in April 2002.
The last Chinese veteran of the 1944 liberation of France has died, state media reported Wednesday. Huang Tingxin, 91, had been an officer aboard the British aircraft carrier HMA Searcher during the invasion of southern France known as Operation Dragoon. The August landings near the city of Toulon were a follow-up to the June 6 D-Day invasion of Normandy. Huang was one of 24 Chinese officers sent to study in Britain in 1942 and who later served with the Allies. Although Nationalist China maintained close ties with Nazi Germany before the war, its forces fought on the side of the Allies against Japan, which had linked up with Germany and Italy. Very few Chinese fought in the European theater. Huang returned to China in 1948 and served for a decade in the Chinese navy after the founding of the Communist state in 1949. He later taught English and tended the library at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University in the eastern city of Hangzhou.
Thomas Benton Hollyman, 89, a leading magazine photographer who worked on the classic movie "Lord of the Flies," died Saturday in Austin, Texas. Graydon Carter, managing editor of Vanity Fair, included Hollyman in a roundup of "photographic greats." He was a staff photographer for the St. Louis Post Dispatch before serving in the Air Force.
Painter Irving Kriesberg, 90, died Nov. 11 in New York City. He combined intense abstract colors with human and animal elements. Kriesberg's works appear in major museums, including New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington. The Chicago-born artist also taught at Yale, Columbia and the Pratt Institute. In the 1940s, he applied for a job as lighting designer of the Times Square Wondersign billboard. For his audition, he created an illuminated Frank Sinatra and got the job.
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