George Wiley
*George Wiley was born on this date in 1931. He was a Black chemist and civil rights leader.
George Alvin Wiley was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of a postal clerk and one of six children. Wiley's family eventually moved to Warwick, Rhode Island. Wiley earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Rhode Island in 1953. He received a doctorate in organic chemistry from Cornell University in 1957.
Wiley fulfilled a six-month ROTC obligation as a first lieutenant in the United States Army at Fort Lee, Virginia. Subsequently, he accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles. Wiley taught for two years at the University of California, Berkeley, whereupon he took a teaching position at Syracuse University in 1960.
That same year, he founded the Syracuse chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality. He was the founder of the National Welfare Rights Organization. He was listed on the Master list of Nixon's political opponents. Wiley was married and had a son and a daughter. His daughter is the civil rights activist Maya Wiley.
On August 9, 1973, Wiley fell overboard on a boat with his children on the Chesapeake Bay. On August 12, 1973, Wiley's body was found on the shore of Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, after a three-day search.
