Cynthia Delores Tucker, born October 4, 1927, in Philadelphia, was a leading figure of the civil rights movement. She marched with Martin Luther King in Selma in 1965 and in 1971 became the first African American Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In the nineties she made the fight against gangsta rap her cause, and Tupac one of her best-known opponents.
The campaign
As chair of the National Political Congress of Black Women, Tucker accused rap labels of profiting from misogynistic and violent lyrics. She picketed record stores, bought shares in Sony and Time Warner to speak at shareholder meetings, and pressured Time Warner over its stake in Interscope. In 1995 Time Warner sold that stake, which also hit Death Row and Tupac, whose music came out through Interscope. She also opposed the NAACP’s nomination of Tupac for an Image Award.
Tupac’s answer
Tupac named Tucker twice on All Eyez on Me (1996), on How Do U Want It and Wonda Why They Call U Bytch. The lines are insulting; in essence he accused her of destroying young Black men instead of helping them.
The lawsuit
After Tupac’s death, Tucker sued his estate in the summer of 1997 for $10 million, claiming the songs caused her emotional distress, defamed her and invaded her privacy; her husband claimed the lyrics had strained their marriage. A federal court in Philadelphia dismissed the suit in 1999, and the appeals court upheld that ruling in July 2000: the lyrics were protected opinion.
Tucker also sued Time, Newsweek and Richard Fischbein, the estate’s lawyer and co-administrator, for portraying her suit as being about her sex life. She lost against the two magazines on appeal in 2001; only the claim against Fischbein was allowed to proceed. A similar case against two Philadelphia newspapers did not end until October 2006, when the Supreme Court, after Tucker’s death, declined to take it up.
It is often said that a judge ruled in February 1997 that Tucker would get nothing from the estate, and that she won against Newsweek and Time. Neither is true: the suit was only filed in the summer of 1997, and she lost against the magazines. The quote in which Tucker supposedly blamed Tupac in part for the Columbine school shooting could not be verified either.
C. Delores Tucker died on October 12, 2005, aged 78.