James F. Tucker, who served on the faculty at Virginia Tech and was president of what is now Virginia State University, died on July 6 at the age of 91.
Dr. Tucker was a native of Brooklyn, New York. He won three Bronze Stars serving in Europe during World War. After the war he enrolled at Prairie View A&M University where he was a track star and went to win bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He earned a Ph.D. in economic history at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Tucker served as president of Virginia State from 1968 to 1970 and then served on the economics faculty and was the director of the Center for Economic Education at Virginia Tech from 1970 to 1974. In 1974, Dr. Tucker was appointed vice president for research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia. He was the first African American officer of that institution. Dr. Tucker retired from the Federal Reserve in 1990.
