Theodore L Cross

At his death, Mr. Cross was the editor and publisher of The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, a quarterly publication he founded in 1993. Mr. Cross, who was white, was a recognized authority on the economics of black empowerment. He was also the founder of Business and Society Review, a journal about business ethics and corporate responsibility that began publication in 1972. Mr. Cross came to wide attention in 1987, when he tried to acquire the venerable book publisher Harper & Row, reportedly offering about $190 million. He was outbid by Rupert Murdoch, who bought the company, now known as HarperCollins Publishers, for about $300 million. Originally a lawyer, Mr. Cross made his reputation in business by buying faltering periodicals and making them highly profitable. With his brothers, Warren and Gorham, Mr. Cross started Warren, Gorham & Lamont, a publisher of professional journals about banking, real estate and other fields, in 1975. The company was sold in 1980 for about $60 million, The Wall Street Journal reported. Theodore Cross’s other business ventures included the JPT Publishing Group, a professional publisher he helped found in 1987. In later years, Mr. Cross released two lavish books of photographs, “Birds of the Sea, Shore, and Tundra” (Grove/Atlantic, 1989) and “Waterbirds,” published last year by W.W. Norton & Company. After serving as a naval officer in the Pacific in World War II, he received a bachelor’s degree in English from Amherst College in 1946. In 1950, he earned a law degree from Harvard, where he was an editor of The Harvard Law Review. As a young lawyer, Mr. Cross became general counsel for the Sheraton Corporation of America, the hotel chain. He took a leave of absence and became involved in civil rights work, participating in the second of the three historic voting rights marches that began in Selma, Ala., in 1965. A lifelong Democrat, Mr. Cross later advised the Johnson and Nixon administrations on economic development opportunities for black Americans. Mr. Cross’s first marriage, to Sheilah Ross, ended in divorce. Besides his wife, Mary, whom he married in 1974, he is survived by two daughters from his first marriage, Amanda Cross and Lisa Pownall-Gray; his brother Gorham; a sister, Margaret Bean; three stepdaughters, Stuart Warner, Ann Anderson and Polly Warner; three grandchildren; and eight step-grandchildren.