Uncrowned Community Builders

Yerby A. Dixon was the executive director of the Fire Survival Center and a pioneer plaintiff in the Buffalo school desegregation case. Working with six other black parents and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Dixon filed a complaint with the state Education Department in 1964. Dixon vs. the Buffalo Board of Education was the first salvo in a lengthy battle that led to the integration of the city's public schools.

Dixon's suit contended that the School Board refused to do anything about de facto segregation and discriminated against African-Americans in the recruitment and assignment of teachers.

Fifteen years later, as the ensuing litigation dragged on in U.S. District Court, Dixon acknowledged in a rare interview that his attitude was "going back and forth" over how desegregation was being achieved. "Busing is a tool, and I have no quarrel with any tool that works," he said. "But just putting white bodies next to black bodies is doing the kids a disservice. We need more remedial help, more attention to helping these kids acquire some self-esteem." Dixon also said he favored community control of schools and parents' right to decide where to send their children to school.

"He touched so many people," said a lifelong friend, Ray Smith, a teacher at the Adult Learning Center. "Hundreds of people who were touched by him were too hurt to come to the funeral."

Smith said Dixon's major regret about the outcome of school desegregation was that there were fewer black teachers. "Most of the black teachers remained at mostly black schools," Smith said. "There was not a policy of spreading out the caring black teachers who knew how to deal with the family of each black student." Dixon and Smith spent summers during the 1950s as dining-car waiters for the New York Central, working out of the old terminal on Memorial Drive.

During the Korean War, Dixon served with an Army infantry unit in Korea, where he boxed in the flyweight division with Army Special Services. In the 1960s, Dixon and his wife, Vivian, became active with the National Association for Children With Learning Disabilities and helped establish the city's first class for children with learning disabilities in cooperation with the School Board. In the 1970s, Dixon and Calvin Kimbrough published Aware, a black newsletter, which evolved into today's Challenger newspaper.

Born in Buffalo, Dixon was told while a student at the old Hutchinson-Central High School that he was not college material. So he went to work for Bethlehem Steel Corp. But in 1971, he left his job of 14 years as a spot welder at Harrison Radiator Division of General Motors Corp. and enrolled at the University at Buffalo. Dixon quickly achieved the highest single-semester average and was inducted into the freshman honor society, Phi Beta Sigma. After a year and 10 months of study, Dixon graduated summa cum laude at age 43 with a bachelor's degree in English and black studies and was accepted by Phi Beta Kappa.

In 1978, Dixon became head of the Fire Survival Center, which offers fire-safety education and installs free smoke detectors for the elderly, disabled and high-risk households. Under his leadership, fires in Buffalo were reduced by 72 percent, from an average of 2,005 a year to 562, the biggest reduction in any city in America.

Dixon and Smith were founding members of the Circle Brotherhood Association, an African-American men's support and service organization. Dixon also was a charter member of the Young Men's Democratic Club and served on the St. Augustine's Center board and the Nile Valley Shule advisory board. He was honored at the 1995 Black Achievers in Industry Awards banquet, sponsored by 1490 Enterprises. Dixon also received community service awards from the Common Council, Hadji Court 62 of the Daughters of Isis, the Children's Television Workshop, the Mary Crosby Chappell Education and Black History Foundation and MOCHA (Men of Color Helping All), a black firefighters group.

Surviving, besides his former wife, are two daughters, Alexis of Lanham, Md., and Patricia Aughtry; three sons, Yerby D. of Columbia, Md., Walter J. Cole and Richard Dixon; two brothers, Clarence M. and James; two sisters, Betty Murphy of New York City and Dolores Williams; 14 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Mr. Jones is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, Lewiston, New York