Benjamin C. Duster III, 1927-2011

Benjamin C. Duster III, the grandson of legendary anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells, carried on his family’s activism by taking on the Chicago Machine, and by steering an education initiative now viewed as a precursor to the massive school reforms of the late 1980s. He was a lawyer, investment banker and venture capitalist — remarkable achievements in an era when a black man had to be many times as good as the next student or worker. Mr. Duster, 83, died last month of heart failure at Advocate Trinity Hospital. He grew up in Bronzeville during the Depression, and had a powerful role model in his mother, Alfreda, the youngest child of Ida B. Wells-Barnett. She had graduated from the University of Chicago in 3½ years. In addition to a top-notch education, Alfreda had a mimeograph machine — and, she could type. People often asked her to help them fill out legal documents. Even ministers sought her guidance. “They would come all hours of the day and night, and Mrs. Duster would help them,’’ said another son, Mr. Duster’s brother, Donald. Mr. Duster attended Wendell Phillips High School and graduated as valedictorian at 16, said his wife, Murrell Duster. He studied electrical engineering in the 1940s at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and joined Alpha Phi Alpha, a black fraternity. It was an important — and safe — place to socialize at a time when African Americans were not welcome at town malt shops and student hangouts. After his father died, he left school to help his mother and his four younger siblings. He worked as a bricklayer and ran an auto garage and a construction firm — while going to night classes at DePaul University to become a lawyer. Mr. Duster also served in the U.S. Army as an ordnance technician in Germany in the early 1950s. In 1962, he took on the Machine, running as a Republican against political powerhouse “Big Bill’’ Dawson for his 1st District congressional seat. He lost but not before making comments that seemed to foreshadow the election of Mayor Harold Washington two decades later. “Dawson has accepted the plantation-age directives of Mayor Daley and his predecessors without ever saying or doing anything for the advancement or betterment of his constituents,’’ he said. “The quiet acceptance of handouts to a few favorites while the majority of the citizens are arrogantly neglected must be stopped.’’ Services have been held. Read the full obituary in the Chicago Sun-Times