Coronavirus has claimed more than 42,000 lives in the US as of Wednesday — especially those of older Americans, who represent 91% of all Covid-19 deaths.
Within that vulnerable population, older black people are more likely to die of the virus than their white counterparts. And among those lost are prominent black pastors, performers, and practitioners who lived through struggles for civil and cultural rights in their communities.
 “Many of them are the last flag bearers of an era long ago,” said Brian Turner, an associate professor of psychology and director of African American Diaspora Studies at Xavier University, a historically black university in New Orleans. “The collective trauma our communities are experiencing risks the lifelines of our cultural anchors and folklores shared through oral traditions.”
The map of where these elders live is a story within itself. African Americans face a higher risk of exposure to the virus, mostly on account of concentrating in urban areas and working in essential industries. In the Midwest and north-east, racial inequities in labour and population density threaten lives.
Meanwhile, the south presents the “perfect storm of characteristics to just be a tragic region in terms of the Covid outbreak,” said Thomas LaVeist, dean of public health and tropical medicine at Tulane University. Poverty and inadequate healthcare mean higher rates of diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
 “So many black folks struggle with inequities that contribute to premature death rates,” said Daniel Dawes, professor of health law and policy at the Morehouse School of Medicine. “Many are not even able to die in dignity.”
 “We’re losing an incredible brain trust with these generations and that will impact an entire country, not just the black community,” Dawes said.
The Guardian presents the stories of five black Americans who died of the coronavirus, the impact on their families, and unique communities.


Theodore Gaffney, 92
Washington, District of Columbia
Theodore Gaffney’s presence in the civil rights movement remains one of the most recognisable — even though he was always behind the scenes. Gaffney captured much of the historic events of the era as a photographer.
Descended from former slaves in South Carolina, Gaffney went on to become one of the first African Americans photographers inside the White House and for the Washington Post.
“He provided proof that black people are being assaulted at these protests,” said Lopez Matthews, a librarian at Howard University’s Moorland Spingarn Museum, where Gaffney was a longtime contributor.
“His work was important in portraying an experience only African Americans were believing at the time,” he added.
Gaffney documented the infamous Freedom Riders, civil rights activists who, beginning in 1961, rode interstate buses throughout the south to protest segregation. 
After Klansmen and white mobs attacked the activists debarking a Greyhound bus in Alabama, Gaffney’s photo of the bus in flames made national papers across the country.
According to his wife, Gaffney died on Easter Sunday at the age of 92 in his native Washington, DC. He tested positive for the virus on 12 April.
“We’ve lost a tremendous wealth of knowledge who actually lived many of the things we are documenting,” Matthews said.


Ronald Lewis, 68
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell called Lewis “the very definition of a culture bearer”.
“I want to educate the world about our great culture, how we do this, and why we are so successful at it even though the economics say we ain’t supposed to be,” Ronald Lewis once said.
As founder of the House of Dance & Feathers in 2003, Lewis provided a community centre that celebrated African American and Creole culture, an important cause as the city saw rampant gentrification after Hurricane Katrina.
“He spoke up for us all,” his neighbour, Jimmy Lewis, told the Guardian. “He was full of love and concern.”
As a lifelong resident of the Lower Ninth ward, Ronald Lewis’s home was also one of the first to be rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina. But though he weathered nearly every storm, the coronavirus proved an entirely different beast for the 68year old with diabetes.
Social distancing made a proper sendoff of Lewis impossible, but the community will come together again to celebrate a cultural icon.
Lila Fenwick, 87
Manhattan, New York
Lila Fenwick is most known for being the first black female graduate of Harvard Law School in 1956, a year before US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg began her studies.
But, as she recalled to Harvard Law alumni, “It never occurred to [her] that there were going to be any obstacles.”
“I knew I was going to be a lawyer when I was a little girl,” she said.
Fenwick spent much of her adult life working as a specialist on gender, racial and religious discrimination at the United Nations until she retired in 1974 — when the UN’s headquarters were relocated to Geneva.
She died at the age of 87 in her Manhattan home on 4 April.
In a tribute blog post, Harvard University remembered Fenwick as “an extraordinary leader who devoted her career” to protecting “human rights of all people across the globe”.


Gil Bailey, 84
Queens, New York
Bailey was born in Jamaica and moved to the US in the 1960s and quickly became a prominent voice in local radio and Caribbean American affairs. “In our history, the Jamaican population had one person on the radio waves, it was this man. We’ve come a long way, and he led the way,” artist Nadine Sutherland wrote in tribute.
“We are losing the pillars that built our legacies throughout this country,” Sutherland told the Guardian. “That’s what matters most.”


Eugene Kane, 63
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Decades before race and identity where designated beats for news outlets, Eugene Kane often called out Milwaukee’s long history of struggle with civil rights and race relations.
And he didn’t hold back. “I’m not doing this to make white people feel better,” he once said.
Born in Philadelphia, Kane called Milwaukee home for most of his adult life, covering the city before launching his own award-winning column, Raising Kane.
“He wrote to make people uncomfortable, to be provocative and start conversation,” artist Andre Lee Ellis, a close friend of reporter Eugene Kane, recalled over the phone.
The longtime reporter and columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was found dead in his apartment on Thursday. City officials praised the former journalist for inspiring a generation of young, black media professionals — including this Guardian reporter.
“He spoke for a community who wanted the world to know we don’t have to ask for permission to be black,” Ellis said. — The Guardian