Longtime Urban League Head Dies
NEW ORLEANS
Clarence L. Barney, the first Black person to serve as chairman of the Louisiana State University board of supervisors, has died at the age of 70.
Barney, who died last week at a hospital of pulmonary fibrosis, was also the longtime head of the Urban League of Greater New Orleans and served on the Superdome Commission.
He was born in New Orleans and lived in Paulina and later eastern New Orleans for many years. In recent years, he was president of C. Lyle Barney Consulting Inc.
Barney graduated from Southern University in Baton Rouge and served in the Army. After working as a teacher and a football coach in Vacherie, Barney joined the Urban League in 1964 as director of community service and rose to the organization’s top post in 1967.
Aside from a year of leave to complete a master’s degree in social work at Tulane University, he was head of the New Orleans chapter of the Urban League until his retirement in 1996.
In 1969, the Orleans Parish School Board appointed Barney to study racial disturbances in high schools. About the same time, he worked with the Social Apostolate to integrate Orleans Parish parochial schools.
Survivors include his wife, Marie Porter Barney, two sons and a brother. Funeral arrangements were pending.
— Associated Press
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