African-American business and community leader, former Parks Sausage CEO Haysbert dies at 90

African-American business leader Haysbert dies

BALTIMORE — Raymond V. Haysbert Sr., who led the first black-owned business in the U.S. to go public in 1969, has died at age 90.

Haysbert’s son Brian Haysbert said he died Monday at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore. The elder Haysbert was chief executive at Parks Sausage Co. The company was made famous throughout the Northeast by advertisements featuring a hungry boy asking, “More Parks Sausages, Mom, please!”

Former Baltimore congressman and head of the national NAACP Kweisi Mfume says Haysbert was “synonymous with the struggle for entrepreneurship among African Americans at a time when it wasn’t very popular.”

Haysbert was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and served as a fighter pilot in Africa and Italy with the Tuskeegee Airmen before settling in Baltimore.