Reno civil rights leader Onie Cooper dies at 86
RENO-- Longtime Reno civil rights leader the Rev. Onie Cooper has died at the age of 86.
Family members say the former president of the NAACP's Reno chapter and World War II veteran died Wednesday at Saint Mary's Regional Medical Center.
Cooper succeeded in naming a stretch of U.S. Highway 395 in Reno after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Born in Warden, La., he served in the Army Air Corps before moving in 1949 to Reno, where he became associate pastor at Second Baptist Church. He won a $10,000 federal court judgment in 1982 from the state of Nevada for discriminating against him when he applied for a job.
Longtime friend and colleague William Moon said Cooper "just didn't fight for black folks, he fought for all folks."
