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February 2, 1997, New York Times, Obit, Carlton Goodlett, 82, Doctor And a Campaigning Publisher,

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February 2, 1997, New York Times, Obit, Carlton Goodlett, 82, Doctor And a Campaigning Publisher, 

Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett, a family doctor who built a small San Francisco weekly tabloid into an influential newspaper chain and used his power as publisher to campaign for civil rights, died at his home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Saturday. He was 82.

The cause was Parkinson's disease, said Alex Pitcher, president of the San Francisco branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

For more than four decades, Dr. Goodlett, who published the weekly Sun-Reporter in San Francisco and eight affiliated papers, was an eloquent and tenacious advocate for an array of rights initiatives. His causes included the hiring of blacks by San Francisco's Municipal Railway, desegregation of the city's municipal labor unions and improvements in public housing.

Dr. Goodlett became a powerful voice in the Democratic Party, serving as a model for young black leaders. In 1966, he became the first black American since Reconstruction to mount a serious candidacy for the governorship of California.
Dr. Goodlett was born on July 23, 1914, in Chipley, Fla., to a schoolteacher and a sawmill worker. In 1935, he received a bachelor's degree from Howard University and later became one of the first blacks to graduate with a doctorate in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. After working as a professor for a few years, Dr. Goodlett returned to school and in 1944, received a medical degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville.

In 1945, Dr. Goodlett established a general practice in San Francisco. Using money earned from his practice, he bought a tiny weekly handout, The Reporter, from a former schoolmate. Within three years, Dr. Goodlett had merged the newspaper with a rival paper, The Sun.

Over the next 40 years, Dr. Goodlett built the paper into the Reporter Publishing Company, whose nine weeklies have an estimated circulation of 160,000 copies.

In 1966, Dr. Goodlett announced his intention to run for governor of California, a direct attack on Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, the Democratic incumbent who was facing a strong challenge from the likely Republican challenger, Ronald W. Reagan. Though Dr. Goodlett lost in the Democratic primary, his call for Governor Brown to ''go into the ghettos of Watts and Oakland'' resonated throughout the Governor's unsuccessful campaign for re-election.

He is survived by his son, Dr. Garry M. Goodlett, of Cedar Rapids.

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