John B. Duncan, 84, who as a member of Washington's last three-member board of commissioners helped broaden the ranks of African Americans in the District government, died of kidney failure June 21 at his home in Alexandria.
He had been D.C. recorder of deeds for nine years and a city worker for 28 years when he was tapped by President Kennedy in 1961 to join the board governing the city's affairs. He was the District's first black commissioner and served until 1967, when, after a century, the single mayor-commissioner system was reinstated and Walter E. Washington was appointed.
When Mr. Duncan became commissioner, many in the largely black city were pressing for self-rule, and Congress was resisting. The District's politics had been caught up in the growing militancy of African Americans who were younger and less patient than the civil rights leaders of Mr. Duncan's generation.
Dismissing criticism from black-power advocates that he had not moved fast enough, Mr. Duncan observed in 1967: "Every generation finds that it is able to be more vocal than its fathers were. This is another generation. It strikes. It marches. It boycotts. Each generation gets closer to what we're all after."
Mr. Duncan made it his mission to expand the opportunities of black Washingtonians. The city bureaucracy he helped oversee had only four African American board and council members when he took office. When he left, there were 143.
The appointments of corporation counsel, director of corrections and industrial safety director went to African Americans, as did many clerical jobs previously held by whites. Mr. Duncan and board President Walter N. Tobriner worked to enact open occupancy and fair employment ordinances that lowered barriers in the city.
As the commissioner with primary responsibility for the city's health, licensing, insurance and social welfare programs, Mr. Duncan pressed for fair housing in the face of "congressional threat and abuse," The Washington Post noted at the end of his first term.
But he also had gone to great lengths to avoid controversy, the newspaper said in an editorial. With his reputation for quiet and responsible conservatism now established, it said, "Mr. Duncan will perhaps be able to respond more actively to the city's aching need for leadership, particularly in the social services."
By the time Mr. Duncan left office, the city still had done little to dovetail its fragmented social services or to coordinate the efforts of the health and welfare departments. He had, however, helped persuade Congress to accept a compromise that gave the city a form of aid to children of the unemployed, getting those children on the welfare rolls for the first time.
Mr. Duncan and his fellow commissioners also lobbied Congress to replace them with a single executive and a nine-member council. The result in 1967 was the appointment by President Johnson of Washington as the city's first black mayor. Washington was elected mayor in 1974, along with the first District council.
John Bonner Duncan, one of seven siblings in a family of educators, was born in Springfield, Ky., and educated in Salisbury, N.C. As a young man growing up in the repression of the South, the far-distant District of Columbia seemed like "the promised land," he recalled last year.
But after arriving in Washington in 1930 to attend Howard University, he found that "this so-called dreamland had separate schools and signs segregating blacks from whites," and that "cafes permitted Negroes to handle food, to sell food, but they could not buy food."
Mr. Duncan graduated from Howard and from Terrell Law School. He was an Interior Department messenger before becoming a lawyer with the federal government. He worked for the Bituminous Coal Commission, the Office of Price Administration and federal housing agencies.
During the 1940s, he held leadership roles in the Benning Heights Civic Association, the D.C. Federation of Civic Associations, the NAACP, the Washington Urban League and the Washington Federation of Churches.
In 1952, he was appointed D.C. recorder of deeds, and he enhanced his reputation by energizing what had been an inefficient operation. He served on the boards of such groups as the Community Chest, the Federal City Council, the United Negro College Fund and the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
With his involvement in every aspect of life in the city, Mr. Duncan was "the only one of the three departing commissioners who would have been at home in a real city hall, the kind with seedy hangers-on and brass spittoons, ward heelers and slaps on the back and a lively exchange of favors," Washington Post staff writer Peter Milius wrote in 1967. "He was the most accessible of the three commissioners -- to Negro groups and to others as well," including developers and other major business owners.
After he left office, Mr. Duncan was assistant for urban relations to the secretary of the interior until 1969 and then worked two more decades as a consultant in housing development, public relations and equal opportunity.
He also headed organizations that included the Washington Home Rule Committee and the Voice of Informed Community Expression, a group formed after the 1968 riots. He served on a congressional commission that studied the efficiency of city government.
Mr. Duncan was a trustee of John Wesley AME Zion Church in Washington and president of DePriest Fifteen, a men's organization.
His wife, Edith West Duncan, died in 1966. Survivors include his wife of 24 years, Dolores Duncan of Alexandria; two children from his first marriage, Dr. Joan West Duncan of Norwalk, Conn., and John B. Duncan Jr. of Casitas Springs, Calif.; a son from his second marriage, Jay Berry Duncan of Alexandria; and eight grandchildren.
CAROLYN T. COE
Secretary and Bookkeeper
Carolyn T. Coe, 77, a former school secretary who was a volunteer bookkeeper at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, died of a brain tumor June 20 at her home in Alexandria.
Mrs. Coe was a native of Oswego, N.Y. She attended Cornell University and the State University of New York at Oswego.
After moving to Northern Virginia in 1941, she worked as a secretary for 12 years, first at George Washington High School in Alexandria and later at Groveton and Hybla Valley elementary schools in Fairfax County. She was bookkeeper at Westminster Presbyterian for 14 years.
Mrs. Coe was a volunteer with the American Red Cross.
Survivors include her husband, Nelson Coe of Alexandria; three sons, Charles Coe of Alexandria, Philip Coe of Orange Hunt, Va., and David Coe of Warrenton, Va.; three brothers, Sherman Turner of Lake of the Woods, Va., Tyler Turner of Orange Hunt and Marshall Turner of Utica, N.Y.; and four grandchildren.