Dorothy Allison
April 11, 1949–November 6, 2024
Allison channeled a 1950s childhood of poverty and abuse into the 1992 bestseller Bastard Out of Carolina, the rare debut novel to become a National Book Award finalist. Catharsis begat controversy over the book’s frank language, abetted by Allison’s activism for feminist and queer causes. Even as Bastard became a perennial target of book bans, its outspoken author was inducted by the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 2014.
Wally Amos
July 1, 1936–August 13, 2024
Better known as Famous Amos, the Tallahassee-born entrepreneur turned an aunt’s recipe into a cookie empire. His first career was as an agent at William Morris, where the treats he brought to meetings convinced Marvin Gaye to back the first Famous Amos location on Los Angeles’s Sunset Boulevard in 1975. A knack for promotion made Amos himself a celebrity, but as other gourmet brands emerged in the 1980s, he sold his stake and opened a bakeshop in Hawaii.
Dickey Betts
December 12, 1943–April 18, 2024
“I’m the famous guitar player, but Dickey is the good one,” declared phenom Duane Allman of his Allman Brothers Band co-lead gunslinger. After Allman’s fatal 1971 motorcycle crash, Betts filled the void with his ringing Les Paul, even writing and singing the group’s highest-charting single, the country-tinged “Ramblin’ Man.” After several reunions, the Florida native split from the Allman Brothers for good in 2000 and reconciled with cofounder Gregg Allman in 2017.
Jimmy Carter
October 1, 1924–December 29, 2024
The son of the tiny town of Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter served as the thirty-ninth president of the United States from 1977 to 1981—but that was only a sliver of a lifetime of service and accomplishment. Carter was a farmer, naval submariner, father, governor, human rights advocate, fair elections champion, homebuilder, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Sunday school teacher, prolific author, avid hunter and fisherman, conservationist, and, notably, a big fan of, and friends with, the Allman Brothers. The through-line of his life story was his unwavering faith. “My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference,” he wrote. And that he did.
Dabney Coleman
January 3, 1932–May 16, 2024
An actor needs a special gift to make an unlikable character nonetheless memorable, and Texas-reared Coleman wielded that gift in scene-chewing spades. After years of bit parts, he made a splash as the sexist, smarmy, eventually trussed-up boss in 1980’s 9 to 5, followed by similarly flavored comedic roles in Tootsie and TV’s Buffalo Bill. Offscreen, Coleman “was funny, deep, and smart,” wrote 9 to 5 costar Dolly Parton in tribute to her longtime friend.
Shelley Duvall
July 7, 1949–July 11, 2024
Gawky and a bit bucktoothed, Duvall wasn’t the kind of Texas beauty typically prized by Tinseltown. But when auteur director Robert Altman met the junior college student while shooting in Houston, he saw his future star of Nashville and Popeye (in which she played, naturally, Olive Oyl). A few years after she dodged Jack Nicholson’s axe in The Shining, Hollywood wondered where Duvall had gone. Back to Texas Hill Country, where she lived until claimed by diabetes.
Duane Eddy
April 26, 1938–April 30, 2024
How influential was the early rock ’n’ roll guitar hero? For his 1987 comeback album, fanboys George Harrison, John Fogerty, and Ry Cooder turned up to help. Before that, Eddy basically invented twangy, reverberating riffs on the 1958 hit instrumental “Rebel Rouser” and inspired the surf rock genre. He eventually put down roots in Nashville to produce country acts and collaborate with a new generation of admirers such as the Black Keys’s Dan Auerbach.
Nikki Giovanni
June 7, 1943–December 9, 2024
Giovanni was known to tell her Virginia Tech poetry students not to expect their work to be noticed during their lifetimes. She also served as proof that wasn’t always the case. Born in Knoxville, she became a leading voice in the Black Arts Movement and produced an evolving body of work that bridged any gap between the civil rights era and the hip-hop generation. With just a short chant-poem delivered to a grieving crowd after the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting, she demonstrated the need for her craft.
James Earl Jones
January 17, 1931–September 9, 2024
Born in the tiny Mississippi Delta town of Arkabutla, Jones traveled to a galaxy far, far away to gain immortality as the voice of Darth Vader. His career was much more than Star Wars, spanning the Broadway stage and films as diverse as Conan the Barbarian, Coming to America, and Field of Dreams. That baritone, though—no one else could have made The Lion King’s Mufasa so commanding.
Kris Kristofferson
June 22, 1936–September 28, 2024
It’s almost unfair that a man soulful enough to write Me and Bobby McGee and Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down was also so charismatic and handsome that Hollywood made him a leading man in the 1970s. The Brownsville, Texas, native and former oil rig helicopter pilot kept his ego grounded, however, all the way to a poignant, courageous final performance duetting with Rosanne Cash at pal Willie Nelson’s ninetieth birthday concert in 2023.
Lilly Ledbetter
April 14, 1938–October 12, 2024
When the U.S. Supreme Court used flimsy statutory grounds to reject Ledbetter’s suit against Goodyear for paying her less than male coworkers at an Alabama plant, she joined a political push to fix the problem for other women. Despite never receiving restitution, she stood proudly beside President Barack Obama when he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. “I’ll be happy if the last thing they say about me after I die is that I made a difference,” she commented.
Willie Mays
May 6, 1931–June 18, 2024
Twelve Gold Glove Awards. Twenty-four times an All-Star. Six hundred and sixty home runs. And of course, that impossible over-the-shoulder catch while galloping full speed toward the center-field wall in the 1954 World Series opener. Before the Alabama-born “Say Hey Kid” earned glory and helped integrate the MLB, he took the field for the Negro League’s Birmingham Black Barons. Though he lived to the extra-innings age of ninety-three, the baseball world’s sadness at his passing was palpable.
Tina McElroy Ansa
November 18, 1949–September 10, 2024
Ansa set her acclaimed novels Baby of the Family, Ugly Ways, and The Hand I Fan With in the fictional town of Mulberry, recognized by many readers as a stand-in for Macon, Georgia, where she was born and raised. A proud graduate of Spelman College, she used her success to create platforms for other authors, founding DownSouth Press and Sea Island Writers Retreats, annual gatherings of Black women writers held near her longtime home on St. Simons Island, Georgia.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
October 4, 1942–July 16, 2024
It’s impossible to separate the civil rights movement from its music, and impossible to separate that music from Reagon. Cofounded by Reagon fresh off her own protest arrest, the Freedom Singers fortified marchers with gospel-fueled harmonies. The Georgia native’s activism continued as a founding member of the popular all-female a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, even as she became an eminent music scholar for the Smithsonian Institute and recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.”
Roni Stoneman
May 5, 1938–February 22, 2024
As a countrified comedienne, the longtime Hee Haw cast member would wear a ratty housecoat, bunch her hair into pigtails, and flash a gap-toothed grin for laughs. But put a banjo in her hands and the veteran of Washington, D.C.’s hillbilly bars and member of the rip-roaring Stoneman Family could shred toe-to-toe with Roy Clark and Grandpa Jones. To view clips of her in action is to understand why she was called the “first lady of banjo.”
