John D. Skief, 59, an educator and political activist who labored all his adult life to promote self-reliance among African Americans, died Saturday after an apparent heart attack at his West Philadelphia home, his family said.
His wife, Tonya, said Mr. Skief had complained he wasn't feeling well on Friday. He was out of bed, unable to sleep, she said, when the attack occurred early the next morning. She said he died about 6 a.m. at Albert Einstein Medical Center.
Mr. Skief was a promoter of the charter-school movement in Pennsylvania and was founder of Harambee Institute of Science and Technology, one of the first charter schools to be approved in Philadelphia, in 1997.
Harambee, which today has about 500 students, had its roots as an after-school program in 1974 in a storefront at 60th and Walnut Streets. Mr. Skief later introduced a full-day program during a city teachers' strike.
Mr. Skief had been introduced to the civil-rights struggle in the 1960s by his father, John D. Skief Sr., who had marched with Philadelphia NAACP leader Cecil B. Moore.
He was involved in a 12-year movement to elect the city's first black mayor beginning the year after his graduation from Cheyney University. He worked as a campaign organizer for Democrats Hardy Williams in 1971, Charles Bowser in 1975 and W. Wilson Goode in 1983. It was Goode who finally achieved the goal.
Goode, speaking yesterday in an interview, said Mr. Skief's educational achievements impressed him even more than his political activism.
"He was a passionate advocate for education of young African American students," Goode said. " . . . He went out of his way to make sure that kids got what they needed to succeed."
Mr. Skein continued to be active in mayoral politics until 1999, when he backed former state welfare secretary John White Jr. in an unsuccessful Democratic primary battle.
White said yesterday that Mr. Skief was an expert at training election-day workers on how to get out the vote for a candidate.
But like Goode, White said of Mr. Skief: "His passion was education."
Mr. Skief went to West Philadelphia's John Bartram High School. At Cheyney University, from which he graduated in 1970, he was a record-setting high jumper and a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity.
He began his career as a history teacher at Benjamin Franklin High School and later taught at three other city high schools: Edison, West Philadelphia and University City.
His interest in what his wife called "alternative" schools began with his growing conviction that "the public schools were not serving African Americans the way they should," she said.
He had been working to add a high-school program at the Harambee school, which now serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
His son Masai, 26, who teaches math and science at the school, said Mr. Skief hoped to begin a program next fall in which high school students would work online at home from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. each day, then go into the school building from 3:30 to 6. Saturday classes were also planned.
"He said he'd hang up his gloves and retire when he graduated his first senior class out of high school," Masai Skief said.
Besides his wife and son Masai, Mr. Skief is survived by three children: Terrell, 38; Kimberly, 35, and Kalima, 19. He had a son, Damani, who was shot to death in Philadelphia 10 years ago, his wife said.
A memorial service is planned to run from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Pinn Memorial Baptist Church, 54th Street and Wynnefield Avenue, West Philadelphia.
(http://photo.walgreens.com/share/p=20081197165064659/l=15083809/g=20047471/cobrandOid=1009/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB)
HOW DO you create dynamic change in a community?
For Baba John (Skief), it was a lifelong question that he answered through the arts initially, and then through education. It is a powerful and deep wound to the black community and to the city to have lost such a large and charismatic figure who was overflowing in that sense of consciousness and community empowerment as well.
The work that John Skief spent his lifetime on laid the foundation on which the black arts, and, yes, education reform, are resting on in Philadelphia today.
The black arts movement in Philly followed the black arts movement of the '60s.
John and his peers were bearers of the torch, a torch ignited by that first black arts movement - and then the civil-rights movement, and carried into the 1970s by young lions like John.
In an often uncredited way, John's life's work made a great difference in the arts, cultural and even educational scenes of Philadelphia. Once upon a time, celebrating Kwanzaa was as foreign to black people as it would be for them to celebrate Hanukkah. But with John leading the way, the city held its first Kwanzaa celebration in the 1970s.
Following this landmark achievement, John went on to build one of the first charter schools in the city, an Afro-centric model no less modeled on the Kwanzaa principles of unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
Having first met John as a child 30 years ago, and having worked closely with him as an adult, just to be in his presence inspired you to want to go out and change the world.
Everything he envisioned 30 years ago, he made come true. Citywide Kwanzaa celebrations - he did that. Paving the way for mandatory teacher and student learning of African-American history and culture - he did that. Getting an old schoolhouse and turning it into a charter school - he did that. Building a charter school up from the ground up in a black community - he did that. Living long enough to make his vision a reality . . . yes, he did that, too.
His death is a terrible loss for the city at a time when the community needs leadership like his in education.
But don't grieve for him. Celebrate, to a conga drumbeat and a resounding trumpet; celebrate, for his was an inspiring life that rejoiced in celebration every chance he could get.
In closing, let me say this: Death comes like a thief in the night, and it will steal your energy, it will steal your passion, it will steal your motivation to do much of anything.
But what will challenge death is celebration, celebration of life. There is too much work to be done to allow grief to steal our motivation to move forward. And so I ask, how will you celebrate his legacy? Focus on that, and each of us will find the energy and inspiration to do what we need to do.
