Witnesses to history: transitions noted.

SAM LACY, 99, died May 8, 2003. America has lost a key player in the integration of major league baseball. Sam Lacy had been file sports editor for The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper since 1944 and was considered by many to be "the father of modern-day African American sportswriters," according to Jake Oliver, publisher and CEO of The Afro.

In the 1930s, Lacy was instrumental in persuading sportswriters around the country to acknowledge the Negro Leagues and the players. Lacy accompanied Jackie Robinson when his club went on the road, recording all the day-to-day trials and tribulations of that historic time.

Growing up, I longed for a career in sports. Reading columns by Sam Lacy, as well as Wendell Smith, a Chicago Defender writer, were an inspiration to me: they were my early journalistic idols.

Though I didn't know him well, I had the pleasure of sitting with Lacy at the 1960 New York Yankees/Pittsburgh Pirates World Series. (Bill Nunn, a writer for the Pittsburgh Courier, also sat with us.) Lacy's commentary was sharp and insightful, and although I was already a well-respected sportscaster in my own right, I was thrilled and honored to be in Lacy's company. Lacy was the first black reporter to become a member of the Baseball Writer's Association of America. In addition, he was inducted into the writer's wing of the Hall of Fame in 1998.

--Art Rust Jr. is a retired network broadcaster and sports historian.

LLOYD L. BROWN, 89, died on April 1 in New York City. He contributed to Paul Robeson's autobiography, wrote a biography of him and had written for many magazines and newspapers.

Reviewing Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man in 1952 for Masses and Mainstream, a journal he edited, Brown wrote:

"Ellison is also a disciple of the Richard Wright-Chester Himes school and shares with these writers their bitter alienation from the Negro people, their hatred and contempt of the Negro working masses, their renegades' malice and their servility to the masters. Cut from the surging mainstream of Negro life and struggle and creativity, they stagnate in Paris, wander on lonely crusades, or spit out at the world from a hole in the ground."

Paul Robeson's autobiography, Here I Stand (Beacon Press, January 1998), was originally published in 1958. Brown helped write it, and in 1971 he added an informative preface. Be also wrote The Young Paul Robeson: On My Journey Now (Westview Press, February 1998).

Brown's novel Iron City (Northeastern University Press, September 1994) was originally written in the 1950s and traces a prisoner's attempt to clear himself after being framed in the killing of three communists.

On June 3, 2003, in a New York Times article, "A Postscript to the Life of a Writer," Clyde Haberman revealed that Brown, whom he had never met, had corresponded with him since about 1966, usually commenting on something Haberman had written. The columnist wrote that the correspondence underscored how "exchanges of letters still matter, a great deal, even in an age of e mail."

Upon receiving the first one, he recalled: "Hmm, I remember thinking, this guy can write. Of course, he could write. That's what Lloyd Brown did for most of his 89 years ... on everything from racial inequality in America to the failings of a new type of bus running along New York City streets.

Mr. Brown felt that, just maybe, he had another novel in him. This was a work that he had begun in 1953, set aside and then decided a couple of years ago to take up again. That book is not to be ...."

WALLACE TERRY, 65, died in July in Fairfax, Virginia. He covered the Vietnam War for Time magazine and the Washington Post. He later taught journalism at Howard University and reentered many reporters.

In 1984, he wrote about the experience of African American soldiers in Vietnam in the groundbreaking, best selling book Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans (Ballantine Books, August 1989). The book was the basis for a PBS documentary.

Karin Berry, a news editor in Philadelphia, recalled that Terry often reminisced about his war experiences when she took courses from him in the 1970s as he was working co Bloods, "He was a genuinely good person, and will be missed," she said.

Jack White, another Time pioneer, told colleagues: "Every black journalist who ever worked at Time owes a special debt to Wally, who in addition to being a brilliant correspondent was an extraordinary human being. He was a gutsy, classy brother who opened up the door for those, like me, who tried to follow in his footsteps at Time. We'll miss him."

HOWARD MOREHEAD, believed to be 79, died in July in West Los Angeles, California. Morehead, a former Tuskegee airman and photographer immortalized many of the greatest faces in jazz. He worked for the Los Angeles Sentinel in the 1950s and was a West Coast photographer for Jet and Ebony.

He took many of the pictures for the 1992 book The Black Music History of Los Angeles: Its Roots, by Tom Reed. Morehead, a native of Topeka, Kansas, became one of the first black cameramen ever to work for television stations in L.A.

--Angela P. Dodson