Leader of first black-owned business to go public dies

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BALTIMORE (AP) — African-American business community leader and former Parks Sausage Co. chief executive officer Raymond V. Haysbert Sr. has died at age 90.

Haysbert, who led Parks, the first black-owned business to go public in 1969, and the Baltimore Urban League, died Monday at Union Memorial Hospital.

Reginald Haysbert says his father survived several health scares over the years, including a collapse at a 1999 political fundraiser after suffering one of at least three heart attacks.

Former Baltimore congressman and head of the national NAACP Kweisi Mfume says Haysbert was “synonymous with the struggle for entrepreneurship among African Americans at a time when it wasn’t very popular.”

Haysbert was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and served as a fighter pilot in Africa and Italy with the Tuskeegee Airmen before settling in Baltimore.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.