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 Lou Rawls, whose cool, velvet baritone was so silky smooth that even the crown prince of crooners, Frank Sinatra, paid homage to it, may have done more to change the way ordinary African-Americans think about giving than any other celebrity. For about 25 years, beginning in 1979, Rawls hosted The Lou Rawls Parade of Stars telethon to benefit the United Negro College Fund (UNCF). The annual telethon raised more than $200 million and helped provide scholarships for more than 65,000 students.
“Lou was the driving force,” recalls John P. Donohue, executive vice president for development at UNCF. “His connections, his relationships with the biggest stars—he single-handedly took the Parade of Stars and made it the longest-running program of its kind. Traditionally, African-Americans gave through their church. Rawls got them thinking about broadening their horizons, both in terms of how they donated their money and what they could do with their lives. At the height of the Black Power movement, Rawls was out there showing his people they had the power to help themselves. “Can I point to hard data, research, to back that up?” asks Donohue. “No. But what he was saying and doing was incredibly empowering
to an awful lot of people.” Nina Rawls, the singer’s widow, recalls her husband constantly being approached by people who said he helped make it possible for their son, daughter, grandson, or granddaughter to go to college. They often credited him with getting their loved ones to begin considering higher education in the first place. And on top of that, Rawls was so darn cool and urbane—soul power in a three-piece tux. He grew up on the Southside of Chicago, cut his chops singing gospel in the church choir, and then broke it big with the legendary Sam Cooke. Beginning with his first big R&B hit “Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing,” Rawls stayed on top of the charts, won Grammys for “Natural Man” and “You’ll Never Find (Another Love Like Mine),” and appeared in numerous movies and television shows. Rawls died of cancer in 2006 at age 72, but his legacy continues. Rawls’s family has established the Lou Rawls Scholarship Foundation, which will hold its first big fund-raiser in fall 2008 in Chicago’s Southside. The foundation’s mission is to provide scholarships to minority students.
“Lou’s first love wasn’t music, it was art. But he was unable to further his education,” says Nina Rawls. “That’s why education became so important to him. Throughout his life, he wanted others to have the opportunities he never had.” –Wiley A. Hall, 3rd
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