Call and Post Associate Publisher and Editor Connie Harper hospitalized, Harper and Call and Post Publisher Don King, a renowned boxing promoter, were the first of the more than 215 African-American Newspapers to endorse now president Barack Obama

- October 24, 2014

Connie Harper

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473. (Kathy Wray Coleman is a 20-year investigative and political journalist and legal reporter who trained for 17 years under five different editors at the Call and Post Newspaper, Ohio's most prominent Black press)

(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio- Beloved Call and Post Newspaper Assoc. Publisher and Exec. Editor Connie Harper, 81, is currently hospitalized in Dayton, Ohio after falling ill on Sunday at the homecoming of Central State University. Harper is also the CSU Cleveland alumni chapter president.

CSU is Ohio's only historically Black public college or university.

The family is requesting privacy , a press release said.

Raised in Cleveland and the youngest of five female siblings, two of them deceased, Harper has been a major voice in Cleveland's African American community since the early 1960s. That's when she began writing for the paper under the late Call and Post publisher W.O. Walker, and hosted a talk show on WJMO, a local radio station. She is a former elementary school teacher who worked in the national boxing arena for international boxing promoter Don King and others. She worked for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections before rejoining the Call and Post in 1998 when King became owner and publisher.

Harper, as editor, and King, as publisher, were the first of the more than 215 African-American newspapers of the National Newspaper Publishers Association to endorse now President Barack Obama, America's first Black president.

Harper has national contacts. She is a friend of the Rev Al Sharpton, and knows the Rev Jesse Jackson Sr., both of whom are prominent Civil Rights activists. She is also an active member of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland, and is a member of Delta, Sigma Theta Inc.

Family members, including her sister, retired Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals judge Sara J. Harper, and their sister Gloria, and close nieces, nephews and cousins are or have been visiting Harper in Dayton.

Harper is a sister-in-law of retired Cleveland Municipal Court judge George Trumbo, Sara Harper's longtime husband. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)