"Thomas-C.Flemming" November 9 1907-November 21,2006"

From Jacksonville,Florida his grandma initially raised him.At the age of  8 his family moved to Harlem,New York and in 1919 they moved to Chico,California.In 1926 he graduated from from Chico High School and began working as a bellhop for the Admiral Line,(then) spending five years as a cook for the Southern Pacific Railroad.He entered journalism in the early 1930s as an unpaid writer for the Spokesman,a progressive black newspaper in San Francisco.

During the Great Depression,he entered school as a political science major at Chico State College.In 1934,after three semesters he returned to San Francisco.In 1944 he was hired as founding editor of the Reporter,which later merged with another African-American newspaper,the Sun, to become Sun-Reporter.For Almost 50 years Thomas wrote for the Sun-Reporter.

In July 1997, he retired as executive editor to focus on his memoirs,which have appeared in more than 60 weekly installments as "Reflections on African-American history." The column is distributed by the National Newspaper Publishers Associations and sent to more than 200 African-American newspapers nationwide.Also in 1997,he self-published his first book, a 48-page collection of stories and photos from his early boyhood in Jacksonville and Harlem.On his 91st birthday,he published "Black Life in the Sacramento Valley 1850-1934."

A Lifelong bachelor Thomas was the 1997 winner of the Career Achievement Award for Print from the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalist and is the nation's oldest and longest-running African-American journalist.The co-founder in 1944 of the Sun-Reporter,he continued to write two articles a week for the paper.

Throughout his long career,he came in contact with such greats as Dr.Martin Luther King,Jr., W.E.B. Dubois,Charles Houston,Asa Philip Randolph,Mary McLeod Bethune,Duke Ellington,Thurgood Marshall,Malcolm X, Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson.In 1997, Thomas received the the Career Achivement California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.Thomas died to congestive heart failure.