Marian Bruce Logan
*The birth of Marian Bruce Logan is celebrated on this date in 1920. She was a Black cabaret singer, civil rights advocate, and former New York City Commissioner of Human Rights.
During her career in show business, she sang using the stage name, Marian Bruce. In the 1940s and 1950s, she starred in the first all-black show to be presented in a Miami Beach nightclub. She also sang in Europe. Her most popular album was Halfway to Dawn in 1958.
As an activist, Logan was an associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a campaign aide for several political figures, including Nelson A. Rockefeller, Robert F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Wagner. Mayor Abraham D. Beame appointed Logan to head the Commission on Human Rights in 1977. During her two-year tenure, she worked to stop the practice of redlining, by which banks, savings, and loan institutions refuse to make mortgage loans to residents of certain areas. Along with her husband, Dr. Arthur C. Logan, a surgeon, she was involved in efforts to stabilize the West Side as an integrated community during urban renewal efforts.
Logan was a socially prominent fund-raiser who generated financial backing for national and local civil-rights issues and causes, particularly those of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Mrs. Logan was the only Northern board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She also raised money for the Congress of Racial Equality and the Urban League. In 1971 the Citizens Union presented Dr. and Mrs. Logan with awards for outstanding public service for their prominence in campaigning for civil rights and better public health.
Marian Logan died at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Medical Center on November 25, 1993. She was 73. The cause was emphysema, her son, Warren Arthur Logan, said. Her husband died previously. She is survived by her son, who lives in Manhattan, and a sister, Esther Harris of Philadelphia.
