Julius W. Becton, Jr.

Julius W. Becton Jr., a three-star general who was tasked with defending Europe from a Russian invasion during the Cold War as the first Black commander of an Army corps, and later led the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Washington, D.C., school system, died on Nov. 28 2023 at Fort Belvoir, Va. He was 97. After leaving FEMA in 1989, General Becton was recruited as president of his alma mater, Prairie View A&M University. He was recruited in 1996 as superintendent of Washington’s troubled school system His son, Julius W. Becton III, said the cause of death, in a home for retired military officers, was complications of dementia. In 1948, while he was a student at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., he married Louise Thornton, who became a nurse; she died in 2019. In addition to their son, Julius III, he is survived by their four daughters, Shirley McKenzie, Karen Becton-Johnson, Joyce Best and Renee Strickland; 11 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. He earned a B.S. in mathematics in 1960 from Prairie View A&M University in Texas, graduating from the National War College in 1961 and earning an M.A. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1967.