Lake tragedy claims civil rights activists
Rescue fails after couple's car sinks

By Tonya Maxwell
Tribune staff reporter
Published April 5, 2007

For a lifetime, Clifford and Alma Minton served, helping youngsters learn to read, boosting college students with scholarships and pushing for black civil rights in the earliest days of the struggle in Gary.

But when the elderly couple most needed help themselves, as their car sank into a lake near Valparaiso, Ind., Tuesday afternoon, would-be rescuers tried their best, but came moments too late.

The Porter County coroner's office on Wednesday determined that longtime civil-rights activists Clifford Minton, 96, and Alma Minton, 95, drowned, despite efforts by a high school junior, her mother and a jogger who was finishing a 5-mile workout.