NEW YORK (AP) – Max Rosenbaum, whose son was killed in an assault that sparked violent race riots in New York in 1991, has died in Australia, relatives said.
He was 85.
Rosenbaum died Friday at a hospital in the Australian city of Melbourne after suffering a heart attack, said his surviving son, Norman.
Yankel Rosenbaum, a Hasidic scholar and doctoral student from Australia, was attacked by a mob after a Hasidic driver accidentally hit and killed a 7-year-old black boy in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights section in August 1991.
Irate blacks formed a mob that descended on Rosenbaum on Aug. 19 yelling, “Get the Jew!” Rosenbaum, stabbed four times, died a day later. He was 29.
The violence continued for more than two days as black youths swept through the neighborhood, burning police cars, looting stores and throwing bottles.
The riot helped shape the course of New York City politics, contributing to then-Mayor David Dinkins’ loss to Rudy Giuliani in 1993. Jewish groups and a state investigation faulted Dinkins, the city’s first black mayor, for not taking more decisive steps to stop the violence.
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Charles McKenzie “Mack” Taylor
ATLANTA (AP) – Charles McKenzie “Mack” Taylor, a real estate mogul who helped shape Atlanta’s ritzy Buckhead neighborhood, has died in the neighborhood he helped create. He was 78.
Taylor died at his home Saturday. He had battled Alzheimer’s disease for more than a decade.
Novelist Tom Wolfe credits Taylor as the reason he wrote his 1998 book “A Man in Full,” though the author says he did not base the book’s main character, Charlie Croker, on Taylor. He dedicated the book to Taylor and his wife, Mary Rose, who were good friends with the novelist.
The novel about a 60-year-old success-driven Atlanta developer with a trophy wife caused a stir among Atlanta’s leaders.
During the 1970s and ’80s, Taylor was one of Atlanta’s leading commercial real estate developers with his late partner Harvey Mathis. Their firm, Taylor & Mathis, developed Buckhead Plaza, a skyscraper which sits at the center of the upscale neighborhood and was one of the area’s first tall buildings.
Taylor was born in Opelika, Ala., and graduated from Auburn University in 1951. He served in the U.S. Navy and Naval Reserve after college.
He started his career as a cotton broker in Opelika, but moved to Atlanta in 1967 and helped launch the real estate boom that now dots the skyline.
AP-ES-01-07-08 0626EST
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