Luther Keith remembered for his good words and good deeds
Keith, a born and raised Detroiter from an iconic civil rights family, was known for both good words and good deeds. His blues weren't bad either. Eventually.
Keith died unexpectedly on March 5, just hours after finishing a gig at Baker's Keyboard Lounge. He was 74.
Elected leaders from the city, county and state level were among those who came, bearing proclamations in his honor.
Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist read a state tribute to Keith noting how many lives he touched through his writing and other forms of advocacy.
"I consider myself one of those lives," Gilchrist said. "As a young man, when I got a chance to meet him through his brother, (Wayne County Probate) Judge Terrence Keith, he always encouraged me to try to be as multi-faceted as he was. He encouraged young people ... to use all of the creativity and courage that God gave them to make their community better and thus the world better."
Keith was born in Detroit in 1950 and came of age during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. He was the nephew of federal Judge Damon Keith, known for numerous civil rights decisions on discrimination, warrantless wiretapping and secret deportation hearings.
Those experiences powered Keith's journalism and his activism throughout his life.
His newspaper career began on the loading dock of The Detroit News where he loaded and unloaded papers. When he graduated from the University of Detroit in 1972, he got a job inside as a reporter in a newsroom that was overwhelming white.
He would go on to a series of firsts. Keith was the first Black sportswriter at a major daily newspaper in Detroit, the first Black Lansing correspondent, the first Black editor at The News and the first Black person to have his name appear on the paper's masthead.
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Keith recognized the need for more diversity in journalism and he helped found the Journalism Institute for Minorities at Wayne State University in the 1980s. It recruited aspiring journalists of color to the program, offering them scholarships, internships, mentorship and a shot at full-time jobs upon graduation.
Several of the students who studied under that program were acknowledged at the funeral, including Detroit Free Press Executive Editor James G. Hill, former Detroit News reporter and current Free Press columnist Darren Nichols and longtime radio reporter Vicki Thomas, who now works for Mayor Mike Duggan.
Thomas said Keith was her adviser in the 1980s and helped her get her start in the business. Like Keith himself, she went on to a career that would earn her a spot in the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame.
"If there's a takeaway, I think, from Luther's life, it would probably be that Luther lived life out on the skinny branches," she said. "He was not holding on to the heavy trunk, he was out on those branches, fearless, chasing his dreams, fulfilling his dreams. He mastered everything he touched."
One of those was blues music, a passion he developed mid-life. Several speakers cracked that Keith struggled to learn it and his singing was not great when he started out. But he was persistent and eventually got better, playing at clubs across the city and beyond under his stage name Badman.
Keith's daughter Erin Keith said she took many lessons from her father's life.
"The first thing that my father bequeathed me was his legacy of hustle," she said.
When she was a child of 8 or 9, she said, he would bring her to his blues gigs and have her work the crowd selling CDs of his music.
"He would say, 'See that little girl with the pigtails right there? That's my daughter and you know, I gotta keep her in private school, so make sure you buy a CD," she said.
She eventually recruited her friends to help because her father gave them a 10% commission on everything they sold. She also noted how many people spoke of his role as a mentor to young people, something she tried to emulate.
"He was always holding the door open for someone else and so the question I would ask today is, who are you helping get ahead of you?" she said. "Because that's how you honor his legacy."
Keith left journalism in 2005 to found ARISE Detroit!, a nonprofit that helps volunteers tackle neighborhood issues like crime, drugs, illiteracy and unemployment. Through that work, Keith came to know people in every corner of the city.
The Rev. Wendell Anthony, longtime president of the Detroit NAACP, said Keith's presence in the media allowed him to lift voices of everyday Detroiters who were often overlooked in news coverage.
"He wrote and covered stuff that they didn't write and cover and gave another perspective," he said.
Contact John Wisely: jwisely@freepress.com. On X: jwisely
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Luther Keith remembered for his good words and good deeds
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