GALLERY: TakePart In Memoriam

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Russell Means: November 10, 1939—October 22, 2012

American Indian activist and would-be Libertarian presidential candidate Russell Means has succumbed at age 72 to a yearlong battle with esophageal cancer. Means was a longtime, media-savvy advocate for Native American causes.

He first attracted the national news in 1970, when he organized a Thanksgiving Day seizure of the Mayflower II replica ship in Plymouth, Massachusetts, by a band of Indian protesters.

An Oglala Sioux, Means joined the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1968. He brought a keen sense of symbolic action to the group and was instrumental in leading a Native American prayer vigil atop the presidential heads at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, to lament Lakota losses in the Black Hills. Means was one of the first vocal opponents of the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo mascot (a mascot that reigns to this day).

A series of cross-country protests led by Means culminated in Native American activists occupying the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1972.

In 1973, a 71-day standoff between American Indian Movement protesters encamped at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, and federal agents ended in heavy gunfire, with two Indians killed and one federal agent paralyzed. Means and fellow protester Dennis Banks were tried on charges of assault, larceny and conspiracy. The case was eventually dismissed on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct.

Means captured 31 percent of the vote for the presidential nomination at the 1987 Libertarian National Convention, coming in second to Congressman Ron Paul.

Means appeared as a television and film actor in productions including The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Natural Born Killers (1994) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004).

His 1995 autobiography, Where White Men Fear to Tread, detailed his early problems with truancy and an alcoholic father and his discovery of the American Indian Movement.

In later life, Russell Means contended that, “The United States is one big reservation, and we are all in it.”

“The only way you can be free is to know that you are worthwhile as a distinct human being,” said Means. “Otherwise you become what the colonizers have designed, and that is a lemming. Get in line, punch all the right keys, and die.”

In the October 7, 2000, photo above, Means is being arrested by Denver Police for blocking the path of the March for Italian Pride Columbus Day Parade.

Photo: Mark Leffingwell/Getty Images

George McGovern: July 19, 1922—October 21, 2012

Former United States Senator from South Dakota George McGovern has died at a South Dakota hospice center. Family members announced Wednesday that the 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate was nonresponsive and near death due to a combination of medical conditions brought on by advanced age. He was 90 years old.

McGovern’s highest world profile was reached in 1972 when he lost the presidency to incumbent Richard Nixon in what was the biggest landslide in the history of American presidential elections.

Throughout his political career—serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1957 to 1961 and as a U.S. Senator from 1963 to 1981—McGovern championed the poor and powerless, minorities and peace.

McGovern flew 35 missions over Nazi-occupied Europe as a bomber pilot in World War II and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross.

As a Senator, McGovern was an early and outspoken critic of America’s slide into the Vietnam War. He sought to end that conflict in 1970 and 1971 with the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment. The proposed legislation mandating a December 31, 1971, withdrawal of all troops was shot down 71-22, but indicated a growing dissatisfaction with President Nixon’s expansion of the war.

George McGovern’s efforts to eradicate world and U.S. hunger began while he was in the House of Representatives, and continued for decades after voters denied him a fourth Senate term in 1980.

In 1961, he became the first director of Food for Peace, which distributed surplus American food abroad, and he was instrumental in establishing the U.N.’s World Food Programme. After being elected to the Senate, McGovern chaired that chamber’s Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs and issued “The McGovern Report” to highlight the problem of hunger within the United States. Post-Senate, McGovern served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture.

In the photo above, Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern is speaking at an August 1972 Operation Breadbasket rally held in his honor.

A statement issued by the McGovern family suggests the best way to honor the former Senator is to guarantee that his work to end hunger should continue beyond his lifetime by contributing to Feeding South Dakota.

Photo: Declan Haun/Getty Images

Michael Clarke Duncan: December 10, 1957—September 3, 2012

Actor Michael Clarke Duncan, best known for his role as a death row inmate in the 1999 film The Green Mile, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles Monday after complications from a heart attack. He was 54.

The actor never fully recovered from a heart attack he suffered in July, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Duncan, who started his Hollywood career as a bodyguard, stepped onscreen in the film Armageddon alongside heavyweight Bruce Willis, trying to protect the Earth from a giant asteroid. His breakthrough came in The Green Mile, playing a gentle giant with supernatural powers, wrongly sitting on death row for the murder of two young white girls. Duncan, who starred with Tom Hanks as a prison guard, won Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for his role as inmate John Coffey.

The much-loved actor was known for more than just his film roles: In spring 2012, 6-foot-5-inch Duncan appeared in a video for animal rights group PETA, sharing how he went vegetarian and turned his health around. He advocated for people to understand where their meat came from, and to improve their bodies by focusing on fruits and veggies instead.

In addition to The Green Mile, Duncan was well known for his roles in The Whole Nine Yards, Talladega Nights and Planet of the Apes. He also contributed his voice to animated films such as Kung Fu Panda and Brother Bear.

Duncan is survived by his fiancée Omarosa Manigault; his mother, Jean; and his sister, Judith.

Photo: Gus Ruelas/Reuters

gore vidal dies at 86 pneumonia hollywood hills gay writer

Gore Vidal: October 3, 1925—July 31, 2012

American author Gore Vidal died of complications from pneumonia Tuesday evening in his Hollywood Hills home. He was 86.

Nonchalantly and proudly gay in an era when careers were based in closets, Vidal could as easily be classified as a contrarian as he could a liberal or progressive.

Some of Vidal’s best known works were the novels The City and the Pillar (1948), Myra Breckinridge (1968), Burr (1973) and Myron (1974); nonfiction collections including The Second American Revolution (1983), Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992), Palimpsest: A Memoir (1995) and Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace or How We Came to Be So Hated (2002); and screenplays for Ben Hur (1959), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) and Dress Gray (1986).

An iconoclast with a pedigree, Gore Vidal’s grandfather T. P. Gore was a United States Senator from Oklahoma. At different times, Vidal and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis were stepchildren to New York lawyer Hugh Auchincloss, and Vidal claimed to have given President John F. Kennedy the idea for the Peace Corps.

Vidal won the National Book Award in 1993 for United States: Essays, 1952-1992 and was awarded the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

Photo: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

sally ride first american woman in space dies first american lesbian is space.

Sally Ride: May 26, 1951—July 23, 2012

The Sally Ride Science organization announced that astronaut Sally Ride, mission specialist of the Space Shuttle Challenger, died peacefully Monday at age 61 after fighting pancreatic cancer for 17 months.

When she and four crewmates launched into orbit on June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to travel through space. At 32 years old, Sally Ride was the then-youngest American to enter space.

Ride, who joined NASA in 1978, made a second flight into space in 1984, also as part of a Space Shuttle Challenger crew. In 1987, after more than 343 hours in space, Ride retired from NASA for a position at the Stanford University Center for International Security and Arms Control. She later taught physics at University of California San Diego and was president and CEO of Sally Ride Science, a company she founded in 2001 to encourage interest in science programs, primarily among girls. Ride wrote or co-wrote five books intended to encourage interest in science among children.

Sally Ride is survived by her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear; niece, Caitlin; nephew, Whitney; and her partner of 27 years, Tam O’Shaughnessy.

Photo: NASA/Reuters

rodney king los angeles riots l.a. riots human rights violations simi valley

Rodney King: April 2, 1965—June 17, 2012

A central figure in the Los Angeles riots of 1992, wayward motorist Rodney King was found dead at the bottom of a Rialto, California, swimming pool early Sunday morning.

In March 1991, television outlets around the world broadcast bystander videotape of Rodney King’s beating by four Los Angeles police officers. The footage—shot by private citizen George Holliday—documented the gang of officers dealing King 56 baton blows and six kicks. The tape was broadcast thousands of times and created an international furor.

The four officers identified as Rodney King’s primary attackers—Theodore Briseno, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind and Sgt. Stacey Koon—were acquitted of criminal charges by a Simi Valley, California, court on April 29, 1992. The verdict set off the Los Angeles Riots, five days of arson, race-based assault, looting and mayhem that enflamed the L.A. basin. The National Guard, U.S. Army and Marines were called in to restore order.

When the violence was at its height, Rodney King made a televised appeal to outraged people from all ranges of the L.A. spectrum: “People, I just want to say, can we all get along? Can we get along?”

As chronicled in his 2012 memoir, The Riot Within: My Journey From Rebellion to Redemption, King battled with substance abuse and conflicted emotions his entire life.

King’s fiancée, Cynthia Kelley, described his last day as spent drinking, with some marijuana use. Kelley said she discovered King inert at the bottom of the swimming pool at his Rialto, California, home early Sunday morning.

Responding police and paramedics were unable to revive him. Rodney King was 47 years old.

Frank Knight gestures toward Herbie, a 110-feet-tall, 217-year-old elm tree in Yarmouth, Maine.

Frank Knight: 1909—May 14, 2012

Frank Knight fell in love with New England’s tallest elm tree in 1956 and maintained that romance for 54 years. Knight was a middle-aged logger when he met Herbie, a towering elm tree in Yarmouth, Maine, about 10 miles north of Portland. As Yarmouth’s volunteer tree warden, Knight was plagued by an outbreak of Dutch elm disease that was killing off Maine’s trees by the hundreds. The volunteer warden realized he was powerless to protect an entire forest, but he was determined to save Herbie, a massive elm more than 100 years his senior.

For more than five decades, Frank Knight directed workers to pare away infected branches and sections of trunk, and the tree survived 14 Dutch elm disease relapses.

In 2010, at the age of 217, Herbie succumbed to the Dutch elm fungus. At the time of Herbie’s passing, Frank Knight said, “His time has come, and mine is about due too.”

Death will not part Frank Knight from Herbie. At the request of Knight’s family, a casket was made from the timber of the fallen elm, and Yarmouth’s most romantic volunteer arborist will be buried within the tree he loved.

Maurice Sendak: June 10, 1928—May 8, 2012

Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak died on Tuesday at age 83 in Danbury, Connecticut. Sendak’s editor, Michael di Capua, revealed the cause of death as complications from a stroke.

Maurice Sendak is credited with transforming the world of children’s books in the 20th century. Both illustrator and writer, Sendak imbued his children’s books with explorations of human nature’s mysterious and shadowy underpinnings. His visions and stories provide a shared childhood narrative for the American generations born after 1960.

Where the Wild Things Are, Sendak’s most well known title, was made into a polarizing movie in 2009. Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) directed the film from a script he cowrote with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius author Dave Eggers.

Among Sendak’s many titles, In the Night Kitchen (1970) and Outside Over There (1981) form a trilogy with Where the Wild Things Are (1963).

Sendak’s most recent book, Bumble-Ardy, was released in September 2011. Bumble-Ardy told the tale of a pig whose parents have been eaten.

Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty

Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch: August 5, 1964—May 4, 2012

A founder of hip hop trio the Beastie Boys, Adam Yauch used his position and influence to heighten awareness and alter attitudes in the United States toward Chinese oppression in Tibet. Yauch, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 after a tumor was discovered in his salivary gland, co-organized the Tibetan Freedom Concerts of the late 1990s. He is pictured above performing at the Exit Music Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, on July 14, 2007. The Exit Festival was started on the banks of the Danube as a protest against ongoing war in the former Yugoslavia.

Photo: Marko Djurica/Reuters

Mike Wallace leaves the funeral of newsman Ed Bradley in New York City.

Mike Wallace: May 9, 1918—April 7, 2012

Journalism, people joke, is a dying art that will soon be relegated to university history departments. But while that investigative craft, dedicated to bringing truth to the light and using honest, correct information to lead a mass audience to better understanding of their world, was at its peak, Mike Wallace was among its most vital practitioners. For more than 60 years, 37 of them as a lead reporter for CBS’s 60 Minutes, Wallace was known as a “tough” interview. The pit bull with a cause, as some would say, pressed the difficult questions, whether talking to a head of state or a CEO. Wallace followed up evasions or half responses with queries increasingly more focused and pointed than the first bite. Wallace died peacefully Saturday, surrounded by family members at Waveny Care Center in New Canaan, Connecticut. He was 93. If St. Peter really is the doorman at the Pearly Gates, the good Saint has just had the rare experience of being worked over by one of the best of a cherished breed.

Photo: Chip East/Reuters

Florence Green: February 19, 1901—February 4, 2012

The last known surviving veteran of World War I has died. Florence Green entered the Woman’s Royal Air Force at the age of 17 in September 1918. The Woman’s Royal Air Force trained women in support jobs such as mechanics and drivers, freeing men to be sent to the front. Green’s war duty was served as a waitress at an air base in eastern England. The Associated Press reports that Green’s work ethic was mixed with a keen appreciation for the wartime benefits of socializing.

“I met dozens of pilots and would go on dates,” she said in an interview in 2008. “I had the opportunity to go up in one of the planes, but I was scared of flying. I would work every hour God sent.”

Four years of fighting in “the war to end all wars” killed about 20 million people.

Václav Havel: October 5, 1936—December 18, 2011

A woman walks past a mural of late former Czech President Václav Havel in Prague, December 20, 2011. Havel, an anti-Communist playwright who became Czech president and a worldwide symbol of peace and freedom after leading the bloodless "Velvet Revolution," died at the age of 75 on Sunday, December 18.

Photo: David W. Cerny/Reuters

Frank Kameny: May 21, 1925—October 11, 2011

Frank Kameny has been called “the Rosa Parks and the Martin Luther King of the gay rights movement.” In 1957, Kameny, a World War II combat veteran, was fired from his job as a government astronomer because he was gay. At that time, the gay rights movement consisted of, for the most part, Frank Kameny. In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a petition that his firing was a violation of civil rights based on sexual orientation and “an affront to human dignity.” Ignoring the opinion of the court, and much of America, Kameny championed human dignity throughout the rest of his life. His campaigning led to, among other victories, the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to stop classifying homosexuality as a disease. Frank Kameny, who died at 86, was in the Oval Office in 2009 when President Barack Obama signed an executive order granting benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. It’s a shame he had to live so long to see that day.

Photo: Larry Downing/Reuters

Steve Jobs: February 24, 1955–October 5, 2011

Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.'s chairman and co-founder, was the architect of technological advancements that changed the way people work, play, navigate the world and relate to one another. Despite the huge contribution Apple products have made to the quality of life for consumers around the globe, the corporation has come under fire for labor conditions in Chinese factories. Also, Jobs’s humanitarian scorecard was something that he kept extremely closely guarded. Nonetheless, the world is now deprived of one of its most prescient and practical innovators. If Steve Jobs is revealed to not have provided a lasting legacy of philanthropy, that oversight will be even more shocking than his death at 56.

Photo: Norbert von der Groeben/Reuters

Fred Shuttlesworth: March 18, 1922–October 5, 2011

Fearless Civil Rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth stood side by side with Martin Luther King fighting for equality in the 1950s and 1960s. The preacher braved beatings, threats and bombings to change history, and in 1963, King and Shuttlesworth's collaboration led to the massive demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, and ultimately to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

(Photo: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Wangari Maathai: April 1, 1940–September 25, 2011

Wangari Maathai was a Kenyan environmental and political activist. In 1977, she started the Green Belt Movement, which focused on environmental conservation and poverty reduction. She was the first African American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her dedication to conservation and for advocating for women in her country. Maathi will be remembered for her persistance, strength and compassion.

(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Betty Ford: April 8, 1918–July 8, 2011

The former First Lady's name is synonymous with the Betty Ford Center she founded after experiencing a dependency on prescription drugs and alcohol. While in the White House with husband Gerald Ford, Betty fought for women's rights and raised awareness about women's health and breast cancer.

(Photo: WireImage)

Tim Hetherington: December 5, 1970–April 20, 2011

Tim Hetherington, the award-winning news photographer and filmmaker who collaborated with journalist Sebastian Junger on the Academy Award-nominated documentary Restrepo was killed while covering Libya's civil war. Tim was killed alongside Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, Chris Hondros.

Friend and fellow photographer Jeffrey Trunell said of Hetherington's work: "The human side of war is one rarely seen, but Tim made that his focus, and it was remarkable. He cared for the people he photographed."

(Photo: Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters)

Juliano Mer Khamis: May 29, 1958–April 4, 2011

Artist and activist Juliano Mer Khamis was assassinated on April 4 in front of his Freedom Theater in the Palestinian city of Jenin. Mer Khamis was an actor, filmmaker and a peacemaker born to a Jewish mother and a Palestinian father. He claimed dual allegiance to both countries and told Israel Army Radio in 2009, "I am 100 percent Palestinian; I am 100 percent Jewish." In 2006, he established The Freedom Theatre, a safe haven that still provides creative opportunities for children of the Jenin Refugee Camp.

(Photo: Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters Pictures)

Elizabeth Taylor: February 27, 1932—March 23, 2011

Elizabeth Taylor captured the public's attention as a rare beauty who wowed audiences on the big screen, but it was her tireless work as an activist, and her dedication to using her immense worldwide fame to change lives, that is her bravest legacy.

Taylor was among the first celebrities to embrace the fight against HIV/AIDS, back when the disease was a terrifying mystery plague. She was the founding International Chairman of amfAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research, and went on to form her own organization, the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, in 1991. In total, Taylor raised more than $100 million for the fight against HIV/AIDS.

(Photo: Fred Prouser/Reuters)

Jack LaLanne: September 26, 1914–January 23, 2011

America's godfather of fitness passed away in January 2011 at 96 years old. LaLanne was a pioneer in the world of fitness and motivated men and women across the country to exercise and eat healthy. He also had a passion for a little adventure. At 41, he swam handcuffed for 1.23 miles from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf, and to celebrate his 80th birthday, he cuffed his hands, shackled his feet, and towed 80 boats carrying 80 passengers for 1.5 miles in the Long Beach Harbor.

(Photo: Getty Images)

Sargent Shriver: November 9, 1915–January 18, 2011

Sargent Shriver was the first Director of the Peace Corps and passed away at 95 after a long life of service. In early 1961, Shriver was asked by his brother-in-law, President John F. Kennedy, to mold a new agency that would come to symbolize the idealism of the 1960s—the Peace Corps, an organization that has sent thousands of Americans into developing countries to volunteer. Shriver also launched Head Start, Legal Services for the Poor, VISTA, and many other programs essential to Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. He presided over the Paris Peace Talks on the Vietnam War and helped his wife Eunice found the Special Olympics in 1968.

Photo: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Certain people seem to have a calling to leave the world a better place than they found it. It's worth a few moments to look back and reflect on their example.