The Rev. C. Richard Cox, 91, who lived for a half-century in Mt. Airy and Wyndmoor, and spent his life fighting for civil rights, racial equity and victims of injustice, died of complications from Parkinson’s disease at Foulkeways in Gwynedd on July 25.
“Dick was jailed a number of times,” Cox’s wife of 54 years, Julie, told the Local. In Selma, Alabama, he was asked to drive Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Montgomery. “Dr. King signed, with a message of thanks to Dick, Dick’s copy of Dr. King’s recently published book,” Julie said. “Dick, somewhat dazed, drove back to Selma that night and was pulled over by police and told to follow them to Selma, which he did. Dick was then jailed and beaten several times during the night. He thought he was going to die, but then he was released the next morning and he made his way back to the home of Amelia Boynton. This was not his only experience in jail, but it was the worst.”
Cox wrote a tribute to Boynton in the Sept. 17, 2015, issue of the Chestnut Hill Local (“Memories of a noted civil rights leader”), saying, “We must continue to work to uphold the one-person, one-vote ideal and not allow our country to backslide on hard-won principles. We owe it to the legacy of Amelia Boynton.”
Celeste Zappala, Cox’s longtime Mt. Airy friend and colleague, said, “I met Rev. Cox in the early 1980s when I joined FUMCOG [First United Methodist Church of Germantown]. We started working on projects with the Social Concerns Committee like civil rights and nuclear disarmament. He was a super organizer, and I always considered him to be an inspiring leader. ... He’d be close to tears when speaking in church about issues like justice. He had a big, powerful soul. I was with him the night before he died. Although he had Parkinson’s disease for 18 years, he was very stalwart and did not want to stop doing things like standing with us on our Tuesday Black Lives Matter and Friday Ukraine Solidarity demonstrations in front of the church.”
Cox was born and raised in Kane, Pennsylvania, in the northwest part of the state. He attended Grove City College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1956, followed by a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s of divinity degree from Drew University Theological Seminary in Madison, New Jersey.
At Drew, one of his professors, Dr. George D. Kelsey, inspired Cox’s passion for social justice by taking him on a 1957 trip to Birmingham to join the drive for racial integration. Cox served as an organizer during King’s historic March on Washington in August of 1963. “So many people wanted to go;” Julie said, “they ran out of buses.”
Julie (Gibson) Cox also cared deeply about issues such justice and racial equity, and the pair married in 1972 after meeting at a dance. At the time, C. Richard Cox was working for Crime Prevention Association, a youth services nonprofit. While there, he oversaw establishment of the South Philadelphia Community Center and was its first director.
From 1976-78, the couple worked with the Navajo Nation in Arizona, where Cox helped advance the research, development, and planning activities of the tribe.
Afterward, the couple returned to Philadelphia, and Cox worked at Community College of Philadelphia as a project administrator in a career program for students until he accepted a position at the William Penn Foundation. During an 18-year career at the foundation, from 1980-98, Cox rose from program officer to vice president for programs. In 1986, Cox and his wife welcomed a child, Yolanda, into the family.
Cox was also deeply involved in FUMCOG’s anti-apartheid efforts in South Africa. In 1994, he was the first person in the U.S. to register as an election observer there. He was also involved in the anti-nuclear movement, helped bring a Guatemalan family to the church, visited Haiti with a delegation taking depositions regarding human rights, and advocated for social justice issues including anti-racism and the acceptance of LGBTQ+ believers in the Methodist church. He helped start and administer an after-school program for Germantown High School students and anti-apartheid activities.
He was also devoted to research on Parkinson’s disease. He was a subject in a long-term study through the Parkinson Disease and Movement Disorders Center at the University of Pennsylvania and, since age 16, a proud blood donor, after his mother, a nurse, called him to come in to the hospital and provide blood to a patient undergoing surgery.
In addition to his wife and daughter, Cox is survived by a grandson and other relatives. Services will be held at 10:30 a.m., Saturday, Sept. 27, at FUMCOG, 6001 Germantown Ave. The service will be streamed on the church website at fumcog.org.
Donations in Cox’s name may be made to the Children’s Justice Fund at the Philadelphia Foundation, which Cox and his wife founded, P.O. Box 826728, Philadelphia, PA 19182; or FUMCOG, 6001 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19144.
Len Lear can be reached at LenLear@chestnuthilllocal.com.
