William Clarke, the husky-voiced lead singer of the long-running reggae band Third World, died on Sunday at his home in Orlando, Fla. He was 65.
The cause was leukemia, said his friend and former bandmate Colin Leslie.
Mr. Clarke, known professionally as Bunny Rugs, joined Third World in 1976 after working with the band Inner Circle and the reggae producer Lee Scratch Perry. The group released “96 Degrees in the Shade,” one of its most popular albums, the next year and went on to have several international hits, most notably its 1978 version of the 1973 O’Jays hit “Now That We Found Love,” which reached the Top 10 in Britain and the Top 50 in the United States.
Mr. Clarke was on all of Third World’s albums except the first, and was still with the group when he died.
Stevie Wonder, who performed with the band at the Reggae Sunsplash festival in Jamaica in 1981, wrote and produced Third World’s 1982 hit “Try Jah Love.” “Bunny had a great voice, something even Stevie Wonder admired,” Mr. Leslie said.
Mr. Clarke is survived by his wife and eight children.
Third World was known for fusing reggae with soul and pop music, and the group was occasionally criticized for that by reggae purists. In a 1992 interview with Billboard magazine, Mr. Clarke described the band’s identity: “Strictly a reggae band, no. Definitely a reggae band, yes.”
Charlie Hackett and the Souvenirs Inner Circle
Hugh Hendricks and the Buccaneers
The Bluegrass Experience
Bunny & Ricky Third World
William "Bunny Rugs" Clarke (6 February 1948 – 2 February 2014), also known as Bunny Scott, was the lead singer of Jamaicanreggae band Third World as well as recording as a solo artist. He began his career in the mid-1960s and was also at one time a member of Inner Circle and half of the duo Bunny & Ricky.
Born in Mandeville and raised on John's Lane in Kingston, Clarke's father was an Anglican preacher.[1] He joined Charlie Hackett and the Souvenirs, the resident band at the Kitty Club on Maxfield Avenue, in the mid-1960s before leading the early lineup of Inner Circle in 1969. A spell living in New York City followed from 1971 where he was a member of the dance band Hugh Hendricks and the Buccaneers, and later the Bluegrass Experience with Glen Adams, Eric Frater and Sparrow Martin.[1][2] He returned to Jamaica in 1974 and recorded with Lee "Scratch" Perry at the Black Ark, initially as a backing singer, then with Leslie Kong's nephew Ricky Grant as the duo Bunny & Ricky, releasing singles such as "Freedom Fighter" and "Bushweed Corntrash", and also recording the solo album To Love Somebody (1975, credited as Bunny Scott).[1] He was also a member of The Wild Bunch before returning to New York and taking over as lead singer of Third World from Milton "Prilly" Hamilton in 1976.[2] With Third World he recorded the successful 96° in the Shade album, and was with the band until his death in early 2014[2] He returned to the Black Ark in 1977, contributing backing vocals (with Earl 16) to Yabby You's "Chant Down Babylon Kingdom".[1]
As well as performing and recording with Third World, he continued to record as a solo artist, releasing the Jack Scorpio-produced Talking to You album in 1995, with guest contributions from Papa San, Cobra and General Trees.[2][3]
His planned 2008 album Thinking Bout You was due to be released on 6 February, to coincide with Bob Marley Day celebrations, the date also being Clarke's birthday.[4] He contributed to the Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band album in 2009, contributing a version of "Lovely Rita" recorded with U-Roy.
In 2012 he released the single "Land We Love", with profits going to the charities the Jamaican Children's Heart Fund (the charity for which he was a spokesman) and Chain of Hope.[5] The single was taken from the album Time, released in September 2012.[5][6] Later that year he received a Caribbean American Heritage Award for Outstanding Contribution to Reggae.[7]
Health problems forced him to miss some of the shows on Third World's fortieth anniversary tour in 2013, and he confirmed that he had been diagnosed with cancer.[8] In early 2014 he was hospitalized in Orlando, Florida, whre he was treated for leukaemia, and died on 2 February at the age of 65.[8][9][10]
Clarke explained that his 'Bunny Rugs' nickname came from his grandmother calling him 'Bunny' as a child because he would "jump around the house like a rabbit" and from a member of the Third World road crew calling him 'Rugs' because of his liking for sleeping on the floor.[11]
Bert Andrews (March 21, 1929–January 25, 1993) was an American photographer, who chronicled black theatre in New York City. In a career that spanned over three decades he photographed many of the leading African American actors of the stage and screen including James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson, Diana Sands, Louis Gossett, Jr., Billy Dee Williams, Morgan Freeman, Alfre Woodard, Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson.
Bert J. Andrews was born in Chicago on March 21, 1929, the son of John and Frieda Andrews. At a young age, he moved to Harlem, where he grew up. His career began in the entertainment industry as a songwriter, singer and a dancer. In the early 1950s, while serving in the army, Andrews began studying photography.
In 1953, soon after his discharge from the army, Andrews began his work as an apprentice for Chuck Stewart, who was well known for his photography of jazz musicians. He served in that capacity until 1957, when he branched out on his own, photographing among other things, stills for black theatre productions in New York City.
One of his first assignments as a freelance photographer was the 1957 production of the play, Dark of the Moon, which was produced by the YMCA Drama Guild at the Little Theatre. This production was staged by Vinnette Carroll and featured among the cast Cicely Tyson, Roscoe Lee Browne and Clarence Williams III.
Throughout his long career, Andrews would photograph numerous productions of important plays including The Blacks (1961), The Blood Knot (1964),To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1969), The River Niger (1972), Bubbling Brown Sugar (1976), A Soldier's Play (1982) and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984).
His photographs have also appeared in numerous major publications, such as Time, Life, Ebony, Newsweek and the New York Times.
On January 29, 1985, a fire destroyed his studio at 750 Eighth Avenue at the corner of 46th Street in New York City. Somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 images were lost, spanning roughly thirty years of work. However, through the help of various theatre companies, Andrews was able to obtain prints of a significant number of his photographs including approximately 2,000 from the Negro Ensemble Company.
In 1988, the Bert Andrews Photographic Collection of Blacks in the Theatre was established at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The following year, a collection of these photographs were published in the book In the Shadow of the Great White Way: Images from the Black Theatre (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1989).
Andrews died of cancer at the Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on January 25, 1993 at the age of 63.
Morrie Turner Dies at 90; Broke Race Barriers in Comics
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“Wee Pals,” with its racially and ethnically diverse characters, rose in popularity after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.Morrie Turner, via Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco
Morrie Turner, a cartoonist who broke the color barrier twice — as the first African-American comic strip artist whose work was widely syndicated in mainstream newspapers, and as the creator of the first syndicated strip with a racially and ethnically mixed cast of characters — died on Saturday in Sacramento. He was 90.
The cause was complications of kidney disease, said David Bellard, a family spokesman.
Mr. Turner’s comic strip “Wee Pals,” featuring childhood playmates who were white, black, Asian, Hispanic and Jewish (joined in later years by a girl in a wheelchair and a deaf girl), was considered subversive in 1965, when a major syndicate first offered it to newspapers.
Only two or three of the hundreds of newspapers in the syndicate picked it up. By early 1968, there were five. But of the many changes that occurred after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that April and the urban uprisings it started, some of the first appeared in the nation’s funny papers.
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Morrie Turner at his home in Berkeley, Calif., in 2005.Kat Wade/The Chronicle
Thirty newspapers began subscribing to Mr. Turner’s comic strip in the first 30 days after the assassination; within a few months the number had swelled to 100. “Suddenly everybody was interested in me,” he told a public access television interviewer in 2010.
Later in 1968, the black artist Brumsic Brandon Jr. created his comic strip “Luther,” about a 9-year-old boy growing up in the ghetto. It, too, found a wide audience in newspaper syndication.
“You can imagine how I felt,” Mr. Turner said, referring to his newfound popularity. “I mean, I’m benefiting from the assassination of Dr. King, one of my heroes. It was kind of a bittersweet experience.”
Morris Nolten Turner was born in Oakland, Calif., on Dec. 11, 1923, the youngest of four children of James and Nora Spears Turner. His father, a Pullman porter, was often away on cross-country railroad trips, and Morris was raised mainly by his mother, a nurse.
She encouraged him to pursue his artistic talent and instilled in him a reverence for a pantheon of black historical figures, including “people most folks never heard of,” he said. (Black women were notably among them, including Naomi Anderson, a suffragist; Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a freed slave who became a Union spy; and Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.)
Mr. Turner served in the Army Air Corps during World War II as a staff clerk, journalist and illustrator on the newspaper of the 332nd Fighter Group, known as the Tuskegee Airmen. After the war, while working as a clerk for the Oakland police, Mr. Turner sold illustrations and cartoons to industrial publications and national magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Ebony and The Negro Digest.
Charles M. Schulz, the creator of “Peanuts” and a Northern California resident, met Mr. Turner in the early 1960s and became a friend and mentor, said Andrew Farago, curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco.
“They were the same age, they both were in the war — they just clicked,” said Mr. Farago, who has curated shows of both men’s work. In a conversation one day, Mr. Turner lamented the lack of black characters in newspaper comics, and Schulz suggested he try to do one. He also offered to share his contacts in the syndication business.
In the imaginary world Mr. Turner created, a diminutive African-American boy named Nipper, who wears a Confederate cap that always masks the top half of his face, leads a small gaggle of friends, including Jerry, a freckle-faced Jewish boy; Diz, a black child permanently arrayed in dashiki and sunglasses; and Ralph, a white boy who parrots the racist beliefs he hears at home and accepts his friends’ reproofs more or less good-naturedly. Nipper has a dog named General Lee. Mr. Turner told interviewers that while the strip broke racial barriers, he was rarely conscious of the racial identities of his characters. “I just tried to make them say things that kids say to each other,” he said.
His survivors include a son, Morrie Jr., and four grandchildren. His wife, Leatha, died in 1994.
Mr. Turner, who also wrote and illustrated a series of children’s books and appeared as an occasional guest on the television show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” received the National Cartoonists Society’s lifetime achievement award in 2003.
Soon after his strip began appearing widely in newspapers, Mr. Turner received an angry letter from a reader about Nipper and his Confederate hat. “No self-respecting black person would wear such a hat,” the reader said, suggesting that Mr. Turner “get to know some black people.”
“I wrote back and told the person that I happen to know two black people — my mother and my father,” he said in the 2010 interview.
After a good chuckle, the interviewer followed up: “But what was the deal with the Confederate hat?”
Mr. Turner paused, considering the question, then replied, “Forgiveness.”
***
Morris "Morrie" Turner (December 11, 1923 – January 25, 2014) was a black-American syndicated cartoonist, creator of the strip Wee Pals. Turner was the first nationally syndicated African-American cartoonist.[1]
When Turner began questioning why there were no minorities in cartoons, his mentor, Charles M. Schulz of Peanuts fame, suggested he create one[3] In 1965, the strip Wee Pals became the first comic strip syndicated in the United States to have a cast of diverse ethnicity. Although the strip was only originally carried by five newspapers, after Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968, it was picked up by more than 100 papers.[4] By the early 1970s, Turner's "integrated" comic strip "Wee Pals" was followed on a daily basis by nearly 25,000,000 readers.
In 1970 Turner became a co-chairman of the 1970 White House Conference on Youth.
Turner appeared as a guest on the May 14, 1973, episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, where he showed the host pictures he had drawn of several of his neighbors, as well as presented a clip from his Kid Power animated series, which was airing Saturday mornings on ABC at the time.
During the 1972-73 television season, the monolithic and monoethnic nature of American television began to change, and Morrie Turner and his artistic talent were instrumental in this change. Turner's comic strip became televised in two different ways. The show Kid Power became a popular Saturday morning cartoon that aired throughout the United States. All of Turner's characters were featured, and they were united through the coalition the characters themselves dubbed as "Rainbow Power". During the same season, Wee Pals on the Go was aired by ABC's owned-and-operated station in San Francisco, KGO-TV. This Sunday morning show featured child actors who portrayed the main characters of Turner's comic strip: Nipper, Randy, Sybil, Connie and Oliver. With and through the kids, Turner explored all kinds of venues and activities that were of interest to child viewers of the time, from a candy factory to a train locomotive. After a successful pilot, this project was filmed and aired for an entire television season (also 1972-73). This exposure helped increase Turner's popularity exponentially.[citation needed]
As the comic strip's popularity grew, Turner added characters. He included children of more and more ethnicities, as well as a child with a physical disability. The all-inclusive nature of the comic strip and the relevance to everyday people were part of Turner's formula for success.
During the Vietnam War, Turner and five other members of the National Cartoonist Society traveled to Vietnam, where they spent a month drawing more than 3,000 caricatures of service people.[4]
Turner was impressively knowledgeable about African American history and combined his artistic talent with historical facts to publish books, calendars and other materials that were educational, esthetically pleasing and humorous.
He had the original copy of the book Wee Pals, which was burned in a fire at his home in Berkeley in the late 1980s.[citation needed] The house was later rebuilt.
Turner preferred being called "Morrie" and contributed his talents to concerts by the Bay Area Little Symphony of Oakland, California. He drew pictures to the music and of children in the audience.
On May 25, 2009, Turner visited Westlake Middle School in Oakland to give a lesson to the OASES Comic Book Preachers Class of drawing. Turner collaborated with the class's students to create the book Wee the Kids from Oakland, which gave a chance for students to express their challenges, successes, and pride as youth in Oakland.
Turner married Letha Mae Harvey on April 6, 1946; they collaborated on the strip Soul Corner.[2] Morrie and Letha had one son, Morrie Jr;[6] Letha died in 1994. Late in life, Turner's companion was Karol Trachtenburg of Sacramento.[4]
The Family Circus character of Morrie, a playmate of Billy — and the only recurring black character in the strip — is based on Turner. Family Circus creator Bil Keane created the character in 1967 as a tribute to his close friend.[7]
Throughout his career, Turner was showered with awards and community distinctions. For example, he received the Brotherhood Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the Inter-Group Relations Award from theAnti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith. In 1971, he received the Alameda County (California) Education Association Layman's Annual Award.[8]
Wee Pals: Funky Tales (New American Library, 1975) ASIN B00072KLVE
Wee Pals: Welcome to the Club (Rainbow Power Club Books, 1978) ASIN B003VC7JQW
Choosing a Health Career: Featuring Wee Pals, the Kid Power Gang (Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, Health Resources Administration, 1979), ASIN B0006XCLLC
Wee Pals: A Full-Length Musical Comedy for Children or Young Teenagers (The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1981) ASIN B0006XW1I0
Wee Pals Make Friends with Music and Musical Instruments: Coloring Book (Stockton Symphony Association, 1982) ASIN B00072YGD8
Wee Pals, the Kid Power Gang: Thinking Well (Ingham County Health Department, 1983) ASIN B0007259DY
Wee Pals Doing the Right Thing Coloring Book (Oakland Police Department, 1991) ASIN B0006R4G98
Explore Black History with Wee Pals (Just us Books, 1998) ISBN 0940975793
The Kid Power Gang Salutes African-Americans in the Military Past and Present (Conway B. Jones, Jr., 2000), ASIN B0006RSDC4
Happy Birthday America (Signet Book, 1975) ASIN B000RB1SGM
All God's Chillun Got Soul (Judson Press, 1980) ISBN 0817008926
Thinking Well (Wisconsin Clearing House, 1983), ASIN B00072F9E8
Black History Trivia: Quiz and Game Book (News America Syndicate, 1986) ASIN B000727N5Q
What About Gangs? Just Say No! (Oakland Police Department, 1994) ASIN B0006R58TA
Babcock (Scholastic, 1996) — by John Cottonwood and Morrie Turner, ISBN 059022221X
Mom Come Quick (Wright Pub Co., 1997) — by Joy Crawford and Morrie Turner, ISBN 0965236838
Super Sistahs: Featuring the Accomplishments of African-American Women Past and Present (Bye Publishing Services, 2005), ISBN 0965673952
*****
Morrie Turner, an Oakland, Calif., native, was the youngest of four children. His father, a Pullman porter, and mother, a devout Christian, instilled in him the faith -- faith in himself, faith in others, faith in his ability to be a comic strip artist. He began drawing cartoons in the fifth grade.
As a young man, he served a stint in the service during World War II, where he drew strips for military newspapers. Following his discharge, he juggled his comic strips with legal publications and work as a police clerk. Finally, in 1964, he wholeheartedly pursued his cartoon aspirations full-time, once again relying on his faith.
One life-changing honor was during the Vietnam War, when Turner was one of six cartoonist asked by the National Cartoonist Society to go Vietnam. Morrie spent 27 days on the front lines and in hospitals, drawing more than 3,000 caricatures of service people.
In 1965, he created the Wee Pals comic strip. It was Morrie's intention to portray a world without prejudice, a world in which people's differences -- race, religion, gender, and physical and mental ability -- are cherished, not scorned.
When Wee Pals was first created, bringing black characters to the comics' pages was by no means an easy task. In 1965, only five major newspapers published the strip. It was not until 1968 -- and the tragic assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. -- that Wee Pals achieved nationwide acceptance. Within three months of King's death, the strip was appearing in over 100 newspapers nationwide.
Since that time, Morrie has written and illustrated many books for children and has received the Anti-Defamation League's Humanitarian award. In 2000, he won the prestigious "Sparky Award," named after famed cartoonist Charles Schultz, creator of "Peanuts." Morrie has received numerous other awards for his comic strip, including the awards from the American Red Cross and the NAACP, the Boys and Girls Club Image Award, the B'Nai Brith Humanitarian Award and California Educators Award.
Morrie was recently the subject of a 30-minute documentary on his life, "Keeping the Faith with Morrie." Produced by Angel Harper, Heaven Sent Productions Inc., the production won Best Direction in the 2001 Christian Film Festival and most recently won Best Documentary in the 2002 Hollywood Black Film Festival.
Today, Morrie continues to work with children in small cartooning programs in the inner city. He was a guest lecturer at numerous California schools, universities and libraries, and continued to reach approximately 25 million readers with his Wee Pals characters.
*****
Morris "Morrie" Turner (December 11, 1923 – January 25, 2014) was an African-American syndicated cartoonist, and the creator of the comic strip Wee Pals. Turner was the first nationally syndicated African-American cartoonist.
Raised in Oakland, California. Turner grew up in West Oakland and attended McClymonds High School. However, in his senior year, he moved to Berkeley to finish his high school years at Berkeley High School.
Turner received his first training in cartooning via the Art Instruction, Inc. home study correspondence course. During World War II, his illustrations appeared in the newspaper Stars and Stripes. After the war, while working for the Oakland Police Department, he created the comic strip Baker's Helper.
When Turner began questioning why there were no minorities in cartoons, his mentor, Charles M. Schulz of Peanuts fame, suggested he create one. In 1965, the strip Wee Pals became the first comic strip syndicated in the United States to have a cast of diverse ethnicity. Although the strip was only originally carried by five newspapers, after Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968, it was picked up by more than 100 papers. By the early 1970s, Turner's "integrated" comic strip "Wee Pals" was followed on a daily basis by nearly 25,000,000 readers.
In 1970 Turner became a co-chairman of the 1970 White House Conference on Youth.
Turner appeared as a guest on the May 14, 1973 episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood,where he showed the host pictures he had drawn of several of his neighbors, as well as presented a clip from his Kid Power animated series, which was airing Saturday mornings on ABC at the time.
During the 1972-73 television season, the monolithic and monoethnic nature of American television began to change, and Morrie Turner and his artistic talent were instrumental in this change. Turner's comic strip became televised in two different ways. The show Kid Power became a popular Saturday morning cartoon that aired throughout the United States. All of Turner's characters were featured, and they were united through the coalition the characters themselves dubbed as "Rainbow Power". During the same season, Wee Pals on the Go was aired by ABC's owned and operated station in San Francisco, KGO-TV. This Sunday morning show featured child actors who portrayed the main characters of Turner's comic strip: Nipper, Randy, Sybil, Connie and Oliver. With and through the kids, Turner explored all kinds of venues and activities that were of interest to child viewers of the time, from a candy factory to a train locomotive. After a successful pilot, this project was filmed and aired for an entire television season (also 1972-73). This exposure helped increase Turner's popularity.
As the Wee Pals comic strip's popularity grew, Turner added characters. He included children of more and more ethnicities, as well as a child with a physical disability. The all-inclusive nature of the comic strip and the relevance to everyday people were part of Turner's formula for success.
During the Vietnam War, Turner and five other members of the National Cartoonist Society traveled to Vietnam, where they spent a month drawing more than 3,000 caricatures of service people.
Turner was impressively knowledgeable about African American history and combined his artistic talent with historical facts to publish books, calendars and other materials that were educational, esthetically pleasing and humorous.
He had the original copy of the book Wee Pals, which was burned in a fire at his home in Berkeley in the late 1980s. The house was later rebuilt.
Turner preferred being called "Morrie" and contributed his talents to concerts by the Bay Area Little Symphony of Oakland, California. He drew pictures to the music and of the children in the audience.
On May 25, 2009, Turner visited Westlake Middle School in Oakland to give a lesson to the OASES Comic Book Preachers Class of drawing. Turner collaborated with the class's students to create the book Wee the Kids from Oakland, which gave a chance for students to express their challenges, successes, and pride as youth in Oakland.
Turner married Letha Mae Harvey on April 6, 1946. They collaborated on the strip Soul Corner.Morrie and Letha had one son, Morrie Jr. Letha died in 1994. Late in life, Turner's companion was Karol Trachtenburg of Sacramento.
Turner was an active member of the Center for Spiritual Awareness, a Science of Mind church in West Sacramento, California.
The Family Circus character of Morrie, a playmate of Billy — and the only recurring black character in the strip — is based on Turner. Family Circus creator Bil Keane created the character in 1967 as a tribute to his close friend.
In 2003, the National Cartoonists Society recognized Turner for his work on Wee Pals and others with the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award.
Throughout his career, Turner was showered with awards and community distinctions. For example, he received the Brotherhood Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the Inter-Group Relations Award from the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith. In 1971, he received the Alameda County (California) Education Association Layman's Annual Award.
In 2000, the Cartoon Art Museum presented Turner with the Sparky Award, named in honor of Charles Schulz.
Turner was honored a number of times at the San Diego Comic-Con. In 1981, he was given an Inkpot Award. In 2012, he was given the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award.
Turner died on January 25, 2014, at age 90.
The works of Morrie Turner include:
Wee Pals collections
Wee Pals That "Kid Power" Gang in Rainbow Power (Signet Books, 1968)
Wee Pals (Signet Books, 1969) — introduction by Charles M. Schulz
Kid Power (Signet Books, 1970)
Nipper (Westminster Press, 1971)
Nipper's Secret Power (Westminster Press, 1971)
Wee Pals: Rainbow Power (Signet Books, 1973)
Wee Pals: Doing Their Thing (Signet Books, 1973)
Wee Pals' Nipper and Nipper's Secret Power (Signet Books, 1974)
Wee Pals: Book of Knowledge (Signet Books, 1974)
Wee Pals: Staying Cool (Signet Books, 1974)
Wee Pals: Funky Tales (New American Library, 1975)
Wee Pals: Welcome to the Club (Rainbow Power Club Books, 1978)
Choosing a Health Career: Featuring Wee Pals, the Kid Power Gang (Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, Health Resources Administration, 1979)
Wee Pals: A Full-Length Musical Comedy for Children or Young Teenagers (The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1981)
Wee Pals Make Friends with Music and Musical Instruments: Coloring Book (Stockton Symphony Association, 1982)
Wee Pals, the Kid Power Gang: Thinking Well (Ingham County Health Department, 1983)
Wee Pals Doing the Right Thing Coloring Book (Oakland Police Department, 1991)
Explore Black History with Wee Pals (Just us Books, 1998)
The Kid Power Gang Salutes African-Americans in the Military Past and Present (Conway B. Jones, Jr., 2000)
Willis and his Friends
Ser un Hombre (Lear Siegler/Fearon Publishers, 1972)
Prejudice (Fearon, 1972)
The Vandals (Fearon, 1974)
Other books
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Freedom (Ross Simmons, 1967)
Black and White Coloring Book (Troubadour Press, 1969) — written with Letha Turner
Right On (Signet Books, 1969)
Getting It All Together (Signet Books, 1972)
Where's Herbie? A Sickle Cell Anemia Story and Coloring Book (Sickle Cell Anemia Workshop, 1972)
Famous Black Americans (Judson Press, 1973)
Happy Birthday America (Signet Book, 1975)
All God's Chillun Got Soul (Judson Press, 1980)
Thinking Well (Wisconsin Clearing House, 1983)
Black History Trivia: Quiz and Game Book (News America Syndicate, 1986)
What About Gangs? Just Say No! (Oakland Police Department, 1994)
Babcock (Scholastic, 1996) — by John Cottonwood and Morrie Turner
Mom Come Quick (Wright Pub Co., 1997) — by Joy Crawford and Morrie Turner
Super Sistahs: Featuring the Accomplishments of African-American Women Past and Present (Bye Publishing Services, 2005)
