Viewing page 383 of 440

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[image]]
[[caption]]
PERCY E. SUTTON
President,
Borough of Manhattan
[[/caption]]

Percy E. Sutton was a trial attorney, an Air Force captain, president of the New York chapter of the NAACP, and an Assemblyman before he was elected President of the Borough of Manhattan.

Mr. Sutton did not achieve success the easy way. Before his talents won recognition, he had worked as a bellhop, dishwasher, waiter, farm worker, subway conductor and change maker, in this manner working his way through Tuskegee Institute, Hampton Institute, Columbia College, and Brooklyn Law School. And, somehow, he learned to fly and earned part of his tuition fees as a stunt pilot.

A native of San Antonio, Texas, he came to New York at the outset of World War II so that he could enlist, in a non-segregated atmosphere, in the Air Corps where his past experience as a pilot could serve his country most effectively. He was separated from service with the rank of Captain after he won combat stars in the Italian and Mediterranean theaters of operation.

Mr. Sutton organized the law firm of Sutton and Sutton, together with his brother, Oliver, now New York County Commissioner of Jurors. Despite the demands of a busy practice, Percy Sutton won distinction as a Freedom Rider and engaged in a wide variety of civic programs, during which he became President of the New York branch of the NAACP and a member of the lay advisory board of Harlem Hospital, among other positions of honor. 

He was elected to the Assembly in 1964 and played a major role in enactment of the Wilson-Sutton divorce bill, which won wide praise from the press and legal profession as a much needed reform. In September, 1966, he served as permanent chairman of the New York State Democratic convention in Buffalo, and on September 14, 1966 was elected to serve as Manhattan Borough President.

401