Eddie Boyd, Jr., Green Party candidate for Governor of Maryland in 2006, passed away last week at age 46. From the Baltimore Sun (August 16, 2008):

Eddie Boyd Jr., an auto salesman who had been the Green Party candidate for Maryland governor in 2006, died of lung cancer Monday at Good Samaritan Hospital. The Waverly resident was 46.

Mr. Boyd was born in Miami and was raised there and in Aynor, S.C. After graduating from Aynor High School in 1979, he enlisted in the Navy, where he was a firefighter until being discharged in 1987.

After leaving the Navy, Mr. Boyd lived in Vermont for several years before moving to Baltimore about a decade ago to begin his recovery from drug addiction and to work with homeless veterans.

Mr. Boyd, who had been homeless himself, began volunteering with the Community for Creative Non-Violence, a homeless advocacy organization founded by the late Mitch Snyder. Mr. Boyd later served on the organization’s board.

He was also an anti-war activist and had joined Cindy Sheehan and others at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, to protest the war in Iraq.

“Eddie was the first Green Party candidate for governor in Maryland history as well as the first African-American candidate to ever run in a gubernatorial general election,” said Myles Hoenig, Mr. Boyd’s former campaign manager.

Mr. Boyd had worked as a temporary agency recruiter for Micromanos Corp. and at the time of his death was selling automobiles for Schaefer and Strohminger, said his uncle Mack Jenkins of Mitchellville.

A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Monday at the J.B. Jenkins Funeral Home, 7474 Landover Road, Landover. A potluck memorial will be held in the War Memorial Building at 500 E. Fayette St. on Aug. 24, which would have been Mr. Boyd’s 47th birthday.

Surviving are his father, Eddie Boyd Sr. of Miami; his mother, Josephine Jenkins Brown of Longs, S.C.; a sister, Donnetta Jenkins of Silver Spring; and his maternal grandmother, Alma Jenkins of Myrtle Beach, S.C.

This news was published last week On the Wilderside.