Black business leader Haysbert dies

BALTIMORE (AP) — Raymond V. Haysbert Sr., whose Parks Sausage Co. became the first black-owned business in the U.S. to go public in 1969, has died at age 90.

He died Monday at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore after suffering from congestive heart failure, his son Brian Haysbert said today.

Born in poverty, Haysbert later became a World War II fighter pilot and member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, serving in Africa and Italy before settling in Baltimore. There, he joined the company started by Henry Parks that became well known throughout the Northeast by advertisements featuring a hungry boy asking, "More Parks Sausages, Mom, please!"

Former Baltimore congressman and NAACP leader Kweisi Mfume said that in addition to his role as chief executive at Parks, Haysbert was a political adviser and community leader who became "synonymous with the struggle for entrepreneurship among African Americans at a time when it wasn't very popular."