At a memorial service for St. Louis civil rights leader and educator Norman R. Seay, who died September 17 at age 87, a new university scholarship and a civil rights award in his name were announced.
The Norman R. Seay Scholarship at Saint Louis University and the Norman R. Seay Award for Federation of Block Units member of the year were both announced by Michael McMillan, president and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, at the memorial service, held Saturday, October 19 at True Light Missionary Baptist Church.
The scholarship, for $10,000, will be awarded annually to a student from North St. Louis, supported by the Urban League, Regional Business Council and SLU.
The memorial service congregation also heard remarks from Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis Branch of the NAACP, Ollie Stewart Ward of the Congress of Racial Equality, leadership from the University of Missouri St. Louis and the Charles and JoAnne Knight Alzheimer’s Research Center, and a number of senior elected and appointed city officials.
“Talk about feeling humbled,” Ward said, regarding the high-powered speakers who preceded her. “Is this a movie, or what?”
Ironically for a lifelong activist for police accountability, Seay’s memorial was attended by the entire leadership of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department: Police Chief John Hayden, Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards, and Mayor Lyda Krewson, who appointed Edwards. Both Krewson and Edwards spoke.
Comptroller Darlene Green and aldermanic President Lewis Reed also attended and spoke, so all three members of the city’s chief fiscal body were present.
Sister Rosetta Keeton of True Life pointed out that the deceased was more powerful and historic than anyone who commemorated him. “How do you say good bye to an icon?” Keeton asked.
Seay’s church family at True Life struggled to say good bye to someone with whom they had worshipped for so long.
His lifelong friend Ivory Ellison, who grew up with Seay at True Life, remembered visiting with his friend shortly before he passed. “He couldn’t talk, but he reached out and touched my hand,” Ellison said. “I knew he was saying, ‘I love you, man.’” Ellison was encouraged by the congregation as he began to weep. “I love you, too,” he said to Seay.
Seay’s nephew John A. Nichols Jr. needed even more love from the congregation as he was overcome by emotion repeatedly while trying to say good bye to the uncle who had inspired and paid for his extensive professional education. “He said, ‘You’re not going into the military, you’re going to the university,’” Nichols remembered.
But even this grateful nephew knew he had only benefitted in an intimate and acute way from blessings the black community in St. Louis shared broadly. “He is the reason why a lot of us have advanced in the ways we have advanced,” Nichols said.
Seay’s influence was testified, often tearfully, by mourners of many generations, including McMillan, who introduced himself to Seay (“he was an icon then”) when McMillan was a high school student trying to establish a black student group. Seay’s mentoring to younger generations was remembered as a legacy that will outlive him.
“He worked tirelessly to involve our youth in the struggle for justice,” Keeton said.
His wide range of civil rights activism, from direct action surrounded by armed police to diversifying college campuses and university research efforts, was remembered by fellow protestors and distinguished professors of neurology.
Dr. John C. Morris, director of the Alzheimer’s Research Center at the Washington University School of Medicine, remembered how Seay challenged him that, however impressive, the people contributing to his research were “all white.” Morris then spent many years working with Seay to address that.
Comptroller Green provided an especially vivid memory of the change agent in action: “I can recall his fiery call for justice in the cold light of the day on the steps of the Old Courthouse.”
Perhaps Pruitt of the NAACP answered best the question of how a city can say goodbye to an icon by issuing a challenge that remains Seay’s legacy: “If you see something wrong, stand up!”
