Sam Grant III

Samuel Hugh Grant III was born to Addie Cherry and Samuel Hugh Grant II in Rocky Mount, N.C. on May 31, 1922. His mother was a teacher and his father a tailor who owned tailor shops in both Portsmouth, Virginia and Rocky Mount. He went off to World War II as a member of the 92nd Infantry (the Buffalo Soldiers) and served in Italy. There, he received the Purple Heart, was decorated twice for bravery on the battlefield and advanced from the rank of private to Sergeant in recognition of his leadership. Although while in the military he had to endure the indignities that came with serving in a segregated system, (his bronze stars for valor, for instance, would no doubt have been silver stars had he been white, and he served under an all-white officer corps) the experience he and his comrades had among Italian civilians gave them the first extended break any of them had ever had from Jim Crow. For years he has remembered every detail of his time in Italy, but has no recollection of his return trip home. He became very active in political protest against Jim Crow when he returned from the war in 1945, a time when open involvement in such activities was very dangerous. He attended North Carolina Central State and received B.A and M.A. degrees in history. While there, he met and married Alice May Wanzer. They had a son the next year. Soon after, they moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for the U.S. Department of Labor. Over the years he and Alice had another son and adopted a third. He was very active in the civil rights movement and co-founded Neighbors, Inc., a groundbreaking organization which worked to build racial harmony and fellowship between people in his family's culturally diverse neighborhood, especially between African Americans and Jews. The organization is widely credited with helping stop white and Jewish flight as larger numbers of black residents moved in. Since then, he has worked for Lincoln University, Oxford, Pennsylvania, Cargill in Minneapolis and The Urban League in Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and served as president and CEO of Northeast Container Company in Jacksonville, Florida. He moved to Minneapolis to be near his sons in 1983. He worked for the DFL, Hollander Corporation and then the Guthrie Theater until his retirement in 1995.

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