Uncrowned Community Builders

James H. White of Buffalo was a pioneering businessman, who founded a real estate company that put people in homes across the East Side. He also formed his own band at the Colored Musicians Club. A native of Brooklyn, Mr. White came to Buffalo in 1956 and bought the Crystal Lunch diner on Broadway a year later. But he soon sold that and built his own restaurant on Jefferson Avenue, where he also started a jobs agency and a real estate company in the late 1950s.

He opened the Cluck Hut restaurant, White's Employment Agency and White Realty Corporation next door to one another in the 500 block of Jefferson. These enterprises were the fulfillment of a dream of economic self-sufficiency instilled by his mother, who had operated the city's only black employment agency on Clinton Street. In 1965, Mr. White was named Businessman of the Year by the Challenger newspaper.

Mr. White also co-founded the Spartucus funding company, a consortium of African-American real estate agents organized in the 1970s to assist blacks who had trouble getting mortgages. "He was a pioneer in black people becoming homeowners. He thrived to see them own their homes," said Ronald Corpening, a brother-in-law.

Mr. White also was a deacon at New Hope Baptist Church and worked as a real estate agent with other local churches to help them establish new buildings. He retired from the real estate business in 1995.

A well-known tenor saxophonist, Mr. White mentored many up-and-coming musicians and formed the Apollo Big Band at the Colored Musicians Club in the 1970s. "I learned a lot from him," said George Scott, Colored Musicians Club president, who joined Mr. White's band in the 1980s and eventually took over the band when the founder's health began to fail. "Everybody knew him, everybody loved him."

Mr. White also was an avid fisherman who instilled the love of fishing, entrepreneurship, music and education in his children. He was married to the former Edna Corpening for 57 years. He often serenaded her with his sax. The couple had four daughters, Sandra, Renee, Denise and Cindy; and a son, James H. "Darrell" Jr. Mr. White was 85 years old.