Raleigh Parks: One of first black executives of Coca-Cola

A night before his family planned to travel from Chicago to Dallas in 1971, someone firebombed the Oak Cliff home his family had purchased in an all-white neighborhood.

The Parkses never found out who torched their home, and Coca-Cola offered Mr. Parks a position elsewhere. But he insisted on going south and bought a new house in North Dallas, said his daughter, Stephanie Parks of Atlanta.

Early Wednesday morning, a fire in the back of that house, possibly started by a space heater, trapped Mr. Parks inside. Firefighters arrived to find flames shooting through the roof. When they entered his home, the crew found him unconscious a few steps from the front door.

Mr. Parks, a 78-year-old widower who lived alone, died a few hours later from injuries he had suffered.

Services are pending.

"He was a pioneer in the sense of blacks breaking into big companies," said John Blackington, who was Mr. Parks' boss until he retired in 1994. "He was a trailblazer."

Mr. Parks was born in Atlanta, went to high school with Martin Luther King Jr. and graduated from Clark University in the early 1950s, his daughter said. He later delivered mail for the U.S. Postal Service.

His route included the headquarters of Coca-Cola, which soon hired him as one of the company's first minorities.

During several decades with the company, Mr. Parks rose through the ranks of the soft-drink giant and pressured company officials to hire more blacks, Hispanics and women, Mr. Blackington said.

After a visit to a Coca-Cola plant in Dallas in the late 1960s, he called the company's president and demanded that the separate water fountains for blacks and whites be removed. They were gone a day later.

"He was a strong man," Mr. Blackington said. "He fought really hard to broaden our perspective."

Because he was such a mentor for other Coca-Cola employees, many of them called him "Dad," Mr. Blackington said.

Mr. Parks was also fiercely loyal to the company.

One day a couple of decades ago, Mr. Parks and his childhood friend, Al Knox, went to a grocery store near his North Dallas home, and Mr. Parks spotted a woman buying a six-pack of Pepsi. Mr. Parks walked to her grocery cart, replaced the Pepsi with Coca-Cola and gave her cash to pay for soft drinks.

"He didn't meet a stranger," said Mr. Knox, who lives in Atlanta. "He would speak to everyone at the drugstore and the grocery store."

Mr. Parks recently learned he had throat cancer and had part of his tongue removed. Even though he had trouble speaking, he never lost his sense of humor.

On Monday, Mr. Parks brought boxes and boxes of fresh fruit to Adre Bower, a neighbor who was also battling cancer. When Ms. Bower said she asked him why he didn't just buy a fruit basket, Mr. Parks pulled out a dry-erase board and wrote his answer.

"Why don't you make your own fruit basket," he scribbled.

Mr. Parks' survivors include his daughter and his son, Raleigh Parks Jr. of Keller.

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