Donald McKayle, Modern Dancer, Choreographer and Director

Donald McKayle (July 6, 1930 – April 6, 2018^[2]) was an American modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, director and writer best known for creating socially conscious concert works during the 1950s and '60s that focus on expressing the human condition and, more specifically, the black experience in America. He was "among the first black men to break the racial barrier by means of modern dance."^[3] His work for the concert stage, especially Games (1951) and Rainbow Round My Shoulder (1959), has been the subject of widespread acclaim and critical attention. In addition, McKayle was the first black man to both direct and choreograph major Broadway musicals, including the Tony Award-winners Raisin (1973) and Sophisticated Ladies (1981), and he worked extensively in television and film.^[4][5] As a young man he appeared with some of the twentieth century's most important choreographers, including Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow, and Merce Cunningham, and in some of Broadway's landmark productions, including House of Flowers(1958) and West Side Story(1957), where he served for a time as the production's dance captain. A Tony Award and Emmy Award nominee, McKayle held an endowed chair for the last decades of his life in the Dance Department at UC Irvine, where he was the Claire Trevor Professor of Dance. He previously served on the faculties of Connecticut College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Bennington College.

McKayle was born in New York City on July 6, 1930, and grew up in a racially mixed East Harlem community of African-American, Puerto Rican, and Jewish immigrants.^[6] He was the second child of a middle class, immigrant family of Jamaican descent.^[7] His father worked as a maintenance man at the Copacabana nightclub before becoming a mechanic while his mother worked as a medical assistant.^[8]

Growing up in an integrated neighborhood shaped McKayle's understanding of the social issues and racial prejudices in America during a time when racism and segregation was commonplace. McKayle was also influenced by his parents' liberal and activist lifestyles. He was exposed to social dance and the exuberant social atmosphere of the West Indian parties his parents attended.^[9] McKayle's educational experience attending a public school outside of the Harlem community also heightened his social awareness. His political beliefs were influenced by his high school English teacher Lewis Allen, also known as Abel Meeropol, author of the poem "Strange Fruit". And in high school McKayle joined the Frederick Douglass Society to learn more about African-American history and heritage, a subject that was not taught in school.^[10]

But it was an inspiring performance by Pearl Primus that sparked McKayle's interest in dance as a teenager. Despite his lack of formal dance training, McKayle auditioned and was granted a scholarship for the New Dance Group in 1947.^[11] McKayle was ambitious and eagerly took advantage of the company's formal training in modern, ballet, tap, Afro-Caribbean, Hindu, and Haitian dance forms. His instructors included modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Anna Sokolow and Karol Shook.^[12] His noted mentors are Sophie Maslow, Jane Dudley, William Bales, and his first teacher Jean Erdman.^[13] Other instructors include Mary Anthony, Pearl Primus, Jean-Leon Destine, Hadassah, and Paul Draper.^[14] In less than a year, McKayle was choreographing his own complete concert dance pieces.

McKayle's early works explores the universal human condition and reflect themes of unity and community through expressive and emotional movement.^[15]

At the age of 18 McKayle premiered his solo piece, Saturday's Child (1948), choreographed to the poetry of Countee Cullen. This piece depicted the reality of poverty and the suffering of the homeless. According to McKayle's autobiography, he was inducted into the Committee for the Negro in the Arts due to the repeated performance and high visibility of this piece. This organization was composed of Harlem Renaissance, leaders including Langston Hughes, and up-and-coming African-American artists and performers such as Harry Belafonte. The Committee was dedicated to changing the prejudices and widespread racism that made it difficult for African Americans in the performing arts.^[16]

The American dance classic Games (1951) was McKayle's first major work and was responsible for launching his dance career. He combines rhythms, chants, play songs and street games to create a childhood scene dedicated solely to playtime. Inspired by childhood memories, Games explores themes of poverty and discrimination in shaping the lives and attitudes of the youth.^[17]

Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder (1959) is also considered a masterwork that incorporates Africanist movement, rhythms, and music. Prisoners of a chain gang move powerfully across the stage creating an expressive narrative through abstract movements of physical labor. McKayle alludes to African-American dreams of freedom and equality through this image of bondage and slavery. The racial injustice and violence of the piece concludes as a chain gang member is shot and killed.^[18][19]

McKayle's early works attracted the interest of Broadway stars, audiences, and Hollywood films. Golden Boy (1964) was his first Broadway production, followed by I'm Solomon (1969) and Dr. Jazz (1975). McKayle was the director and choreographer of Raisin (1974) and was awarded a Tony for the best musical. He was responsible for the entire concept, staging and choreography of Sophisticated Ladies (1981), which has won numerous awards.

Creating choreography for celebrities led to his appearances in popular television shows such as The Bill Cosby Show and The Ed Sullivan Show. McKayle's work was broadcast on every major TV network from 1951 to 1985. He has also choreographed for films including Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1970), The Great White Hope(1972), and The Minstrel Man (1976).^[14]

Donald McKayle : Heartbeats of a Dancemaker Film by Joy Chong-Stannard; Victoria N Kneubuhl; Gregg Lizenbery; Marilyn Cristofori. Musical score by Stephen Fox. Appearances by Donald McKayle; Della Reese (narrator); Harry Belafonte; José Limón Dance Company; San Jose and Cleveland Ballet. Dance Pioneers; Hawaii Public Television; Dance Horizons Video.

In 1963 McKayle was awarded the Capezio Dance Award, and in 1992 received the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement.^[20] In 2004 he received the Heritage Award from the National dance association for his contributions to dance education. He was the first to receive the Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for Research from the University of California, Irvine where he was an instructor and the artistic director of UCI's dance troupe.^[21]

The 2016 Bessie for Outstanding Revival (The New York Dance and Performance Awards) was presented to Rainbow ’Round My Shoulder by Donald McKayle, performed by Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, and produced by Paul Taylor American Modern Dance at the David H. Koch Theater for giving a classic modern dance powerful new life, transforming the midcentury portrayal of an African-American prison chain gang into a searingly resonant cry for our current times, performed with humanity, craft, and beauty.^[22]

McKayle formed and directed his own dance company, Donald McKayle and Dancers (1951–69), and was the head of the Inner City Repertory Dance Company from 1970 to 1974.^[13] He maintained relationships with companies that are repositories of his work including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, the Cleveland San Jose Ballet, and the Los Angeles Contemporary Dance Theatre. He has been a choreographer of the Limon Dance Company since 1995.^[23] He has also choreographed over 70 pieces for dance companies around the world in the U.S., Canada, Israel, Europe and South America.^[21]

Nellie McKay, Co-Editor of Norton Anthology of African American Literature

Nellie Yvonne McKay (May 12, 1930 – January 22, 2006) was an American academic and author who was the Evjue-Bascom Professor of American and African-American Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she also taught in English and women's studies, and is best known as the co-editor (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) of the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature.

Nellie Yvonne McKay (May 12, 1930 – January 22, 2006) was an American academic and author who was the Evjue-Bascom Professor of American and African-American Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she also taught in English and women's studies, and is best known as the co-editor (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) of the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature.

Born in Queens as Nellie Yvonne Reynolds, her parents were Jamaican immigrants. She was private about her age but was probably born between 1931 and 1947, according to colleagues. She graduated with a B.A. in English from Queens College in 1969, a master's in English and American literature from Harvard in 1971, and a Ph.D. in the same field from Harvard in 1977.

McKay was Assistant Professor of English and American Literature at Simmons College and Visiting Professor of Afro-American Literature at MIT between 1973 and 1978.

McKay joined the faculty of UW–Madison in 1978, receiving tenure in 1984. Her research specialties included 19th- and 20th-Century American and African American Literature, Black Women’s Literature and Multicultural Women’s Writings, all fields that essentially did not exist when she was a student, and whose modern curricula, by many accounts, became heavily indebted to her scholarship. Her colleague at UW–Madison, Craig Werner, said, "When she came here there was not a single university that was paying any attention to black women’s literature. Now, there isn’t a single university that isn’t."^[1] A former student recalls that, in 1979, McKay provided the class with photocopied versions of Native Son by Richard Wright and Black Manhattan by James Weldon Johnson, books that were then out of print, from her own rare copies.^[2]

According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, in 1991 she was offered the Harvard University post in Afro-American Studies that was later taken by Gates, whom she had recommended in her stead.^[3]

By the time she collaborated with Gates on the Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, in 1996, she was already widely known as a pre-eminent scholar in the field of black American literature, and Gates specifically sought her out. The book became a worldwide standard in the field and remains in print in a second edition. It was selected by former Poet Laureate of the United States Rita Dove in 2000 for the National Millennium Time Capsule created by the White House to be stored by the National Archives until the 22nd century, with Dove calling it "a lucid and eloquent history of one of this country's most significant subcultures".^[4][5]

Her edited book Critical Essays on Toni Morrison is "largely credited with establishing the critical acclaim" that led to Morrison's Nobel Prize in Literature.^[3] She played a key role in establishing the UW–Madison Lorraine Hansberry Visiting Professorship in the Dramatic Arts.^[1] At the time of her death, McKay had been working on a revised edition of the seminal 1982 black feminist anthology All the Women Are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us Brave: Black Women’s Studies, originally edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith.^[6]

She was also advisory editor for the African American Review,^[7] president of the Midwest Consortium of Black Studies^[7] and a member of the Board of Directors of the Toni Morrison Society.^[8]

McKay died January 22, 2006, of colon cancer at a hospice in Fitchburg, Wisconsin. She was believed to be in her 70s.

The University held a national symposium in her honor April 1, 2006, including a short film Remembering Nellie McKay by Pete McPartland Jr., and readings by over 40 fellow academics from across the country.^[1]

William McGhee, Stage, Film and Television Actor

William McGhee (July 24, 1930 – February 17, 2007) was an American stage, film and television actor. He was also known professionally as Bill McGee, Bill McGhee and William Bill McGhee.

On June 21, 1946, aged 15, McGhee held an elevator operator job at the Baker Hotel in downtown Dallas, when an ammonia explosion occurred during work on a refrigeration unit. He was temporarily reported as dead in the media, but he survived. He suffered amnesia, but was fully restored to health. He resumed his pursuit for the theater after recovery.^[1][2]

He served his country as an Army corporal in the 31st Unit division^{[clarification needed]} in the Korean War, and performed for the troops at Camp Atterbury, Indiana. He was among the soldiers exposed to atmospheric nuclear testing at Yucca Flats, Nevada to measure the bomb's consequences. He was reportedly selected for the mission because of the injuries he had survived in the Baker Hotel blast.^[2]

After his honorable discharge from the military, McGhee returned to performing at the Dallas Theater Center's Janus Players. In 1954, he broke racial barriers and was the first African-American actor to perform professionally on the Dallas stage in roles without racial requirements. He performed in more than 35 theater productions and stage plays, and in more than 15 films, including High Yellow (1965), Curse of the Swamp Creature (1966), Don't Look in the Basement (1973), Drive-In (1976), 1918 (1985) and Riverbend (1989).

He was one of the first unionized African-American actors in Dallas with SAG (Screen Actors Guild) and AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists).

McGhee died from male breast cancer, aged 76. He was survived by his wife, Ina B. Daniels Hurdle-McGhee, a civil rights activist, as well as by his children: a son, Derek McGhee, a daughter, Dawn McGhee, an actress/dire
ctor/producer. He was also survived by ten siblings.

William Shield McFeely, American Historian

William Shield McFeely (born September 25, 1930)^[1] is an American historian. He retired as the Abraham Baldwin Professor of the Humanities emeritus at the University of Georgia in 1997, and has been affiliated with Harvard University since 2006.

McFeely received his B.A. from Amherst College in 1952, and Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1966. He studied there with, among others, C. Vann Woodward, whose book The Strange Career of Jim Crow was a staple of the Civil Rights movement. Like Woodward, he sought to employ history in the service of civil rights. His dissertation, later the 1968 book Yankee Stepfather, explored the ill-fated Freedmen's Bureau which was created to help ex-slaves after the Civil War. While at Yale, during the tumultuous years of the American Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movements, he was instrumental in creating the African-American studies program at a time when such programs were still controversial. He taught for 16 years at Mount Holyoke College before joining the University of Georgia in 1986 as the Constance E. Smith Fellow. McFeely won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for his 1981 biography of Ulysses S. Grant, which portrayed the general and president in a harsh light, concluding that Grant "Did not rise above limited talents or inspire others to do so in ways that make his administration a credit to American politics."^[2]

McFeely retired in 1997, and was a fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study during the 2006-2007 academic year, where he studied Henry Adams and his wife Clover Adams, and Clarence King and his wife Ada Copeland King.^[3] He is a currently a visiting scholar and associate member of Harvard's Afro-American Studies Department and an associate of their Humanities Center.

James McFadden, Founder of the Human Life Foundation

James Patrick McFadden (1930–1998) was an American journalist and publisher who founded the Ad Hoc Committee in Defense of Life in 1973 as a reaction to the Roe v. Wadedecision by the United States Supreme Court. He also founded the Human Life Foundation, and in 1974 he launched its publication, the Human Life Review, a quarterly journal of scholarship opposed to abortion.^[1] He also founded the National Committee of Catholic Laymen in 1977.

He was a native of Youngstown, Ohio. He graduated from Youngstown College in 1953 and served in the Army from 1954 to 1956.^[1] He began his journalism career with the Youngstown Vindicator. In 1956 he began working for National Review magazine, after reading about the magazine's founding while stationed in Germany as a military intelligence aide. He was on the National Review's staff for more than 25 years, including 12 years as associate publisher.^[1]

McFadden died of an esophageal hemorrhage on October 17, 1998, following a five-year struggle with cancer.^[2][3]

James McEachin, American Actor

James McEachin (born May 20, 1930) is an American actor, award-winning^[1] author, and known for his many character roles such as portraying police Lieutenant Brock in several Perry Mason television movies. As the star of the television detective series Tenafly he is (along with Susan Saint James of McMillan & Wife) one of the last surviving actors to have starred as a title character from a series featured on the NBC Mystery Movie.He is alive today in 2018.

McEachin served in the United States Army before, and then during, the Korean War. Serving in King Company, 9th Infantry Regiment (United States), 2nd Infantry Division, he was wounded (nearly fatally) in an ambush and nearly left for dead. McEachin was one of only two soldiers to survive the ambush. He was awarded both the Purple Heart and Silver Star in 2005 by California Congressman David Dreier after McEachin participated in a Veterans History Project interview given by Dreier's office and in which they discovered McEachin had no copies of his own military records. Dreier's office quickly traced the records and notified McEachin of the Silver Star commendation and awarding him all seven of his medals of valor shortly thereafter, fifty years after his service.

Following his military career, McEachin dabbled in civil service, first as a fireman and then a policeman in Hackensack, New Jersey, before he moved to California and became a record producer. Known as Jimmy Mack in the industry, he worked with young artists such as Otis Redding and went on to produce The Furys. He began his acting career shortly after, and was signed by Universal as a contract actor in the 1960s.

He was regularly cast in professional, "solid citizen" occupational roles, such as a lawyer or a police commander, guesting on numerous series such as Hawaii Five-O, Rockford Files, Mannix, The Feather and Father Gang, The Eddie Capra Mysteries, Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, Diagnosis Murder, Dragnet, It Takes a Thief, and Adam-12, and in television movies including Welcome Home, Johnny Bristol (1972), The Alpha Caper (1973) and The Dead Don't Die (1975). He appeared in such feature films as Uptight (1968), If He Hollers, Let Him Go! (1968), The Undefeated (1969), The Lawyer (1970), Buck and the Preacher (1972), The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) and Fuzz (1972).

McEachin played Mr. Turner, a tax collector for the I.R.S., and later a character called Solomon Jackson, a co-worker that Archie Bunker tries to recruit for his social club, on the television show All in the Family. He played the deejay Sweet Al Monte in Play Misty for Me (1971) with Clint Eastwood. In 1973, he starred as Harry Tenafly, the title character in Tenafly, a short-lived detective series about a police officer turned private detective who relied on his wits and hard work rather than guns and fistfights. He also appeared occasionally as Lieutenant Ron Crockett on Emergency!. In 1978, he played a police officer in Every Which Way But Loose. In 1979, he played the role of a jaded ex-marine high school baseball coach in an episode ("Out at Home") of The White Shadow.

He made his third film with Eastwood in 1983 when he starred as Detective Barnes in the fourth Dirty Harry movie, Sudden Impact. He also appeared as Dr. Victor Millson, chairman of the fictitious National Council of Astronautics in the 1984 movie, 2010. In addition to his appearing role with Roy Scheider, his character often appears in video dispatches transmitted to the American astronauts in the film. While continuing to guest star in many television series and appearing in several feature-length films, McEachin landed his most memorable role, that of police lieutenant Brock in the 1986 television movie Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun. He would reprise this role in more than a dozen Perry Mason telemovies from 1986 until 1995, starring opposite Raymond Burr, and appeared in the 1994 crime thriller Double Exposure.

In the 1990s, he semi-retired from acting to pursue a writing career. His first work was a military history of the court-martial of 63 black American soldiers during the First World War, titled Farewell to the Mockingbirds (1995), which won the 1998 Benjamin Franklin Award.^[2] His next works, mainly fiction novels, included The Heroin Factor (1999), Say Goodnight to the Boys in Blue (2000), The Great Canis Lupus (2001), and Tell me a Tale: A Novel of the Old South (2003). He published Pebbles in the Roadway in (2003), a collection of short stories and essays which he describes as "a philosophical view of America and Americans". In 2005, McEachin produced the award-winning^[3] audio book Voices: A Tribute to the American Veteran.

In early 2006, the film short Reveille, in which McEachin starred with David Huddleston, began to play to troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and people began to request copies of the film. The film was posted on video.google.com and quickly garnered 1.5 million hits and a deluge of fan mail to the jamesmceachin.com website; this inspired McEachin's latest contribution, Old Glory,^[4] which he wrote, produced, directed, and acted in. Old Glory was McEachin's directorial debut.

In 2001, McEachin received the Distinguished Achievement Award^[5] from Morgan State University. In 2005, he became an Army Reserve Ambassador; this distinction carries the protocol of a two-star general.^[6] As part of his work on behalf of the military and veterans, McEachin has participated in ceremonies for Purple Hearts Reunited, a charitable organization that works to return lost and stolen military awards to the recipients or their families.^[7]

McEachin is married with three grown children, Alainia, Lyle, and Felecia, who was personal assistant to, among others, Ice Cube and (the late) Emmy Award-winning director, producer, and writer Sam Simon.^[8][9]

The pronunciation of "McEachin," as he used it in a public service ad for the Army Relief Agency, rhymes with "beachin."

Francis McCourt, Author of Angela's Ashes

Francis McCourt (August 19, 1930 – July 19, 2009) was an Irish-American teacher and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Angela's Ashes, a tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood.^[1]

Frank McCourt was born in New York City's Brooklyn borough, on 19 August 1930 to Malachy McCourt (1901–1985), who falsely claimed to have been in the IRA during the Irish War of Independence, and Irish Catholic mother Angela Sheehan (1908–1981) from Limerick.^[2][3][4] Frank McCourt lived in New York with his parents and four younger siblings: Malachy, born in 1931; twins Oliver and Eugene, born in 1932; and a younger sister, Margaret, who died just seven weeks after birth, in 1934.^[3] In the midst of the Great Depression, the family moved back to Ireland. Unable to find steady work in Belfast or Dublin and beset by Malachy Senior's alcoholism, the McCourt family returned to their mother's native Limerick, where they sank even deeper into poverty.^[3] They lived in a rain-soaked slum, the parents and children sharing one bed together, McCourt's father drinking away what little money they had. The twins Oliver and Eugene died in early childhood due to the squalor of their circumstances, and two more boys were born: Michael, who later lived in San Francisco (where he was called the "Dean of Bartenders") until his death in September 2015; and Alphonsus, who published a memoir of his own and died in 2016. Frank McCourt himself nearly died of typhoid fever when he was 11.

McCourt related that when he was 11, his father left Limerick to find work in the factories of wartime Coventry, England, rarely sending back money to support his family. Eventually McCourt recounts that Malachy Senior abandoned Frank's mother altogether, leaving her to raise her four surviving children, on the edge of starvation, without any source of income.^[3] Frank's school education ended at age 13,^[3] when the Irish Christian Brothers rejected him. Frank then held odd jobs and stole bread and milk in an effort to provide for his mother and three surviving brothers.

In October 1949, at the age of 19, McCourt left Ireland. He had saved money from various jobs including as a telegram delivery boy^[3] and stolen from one of his employers, a moneylender, after her death.^[5] He took a boat from Cork to New York City. A priest he had met on the ship got him a room to stay in and his job at New York City's Biltmore Hotel. He earned about $26 a week and sent $10 of it to his mother in Limerick. Brothers Malachy and Michael followed him to New York and so, later, did their mother Angela.^[3] In 1951, McCourt was drafted during the Korean War and sent to Bavaria for two years initially training dogs, then as a clerk. Upon his discharge from the US Army, he returned to New York City, where he held a series of jobs on docks, in warehouses, and in banks.^[3]

Using his GI Bill education benefits, McCourt talked his way into New York University by claiming he was intelligent and read a great deal; they admitted him on one year's probation provided he maintained a B average. He graduated in 1957 from New York University with a bachelor's degree in English. He taught at six New York schools, including McKee Vocational and Technical High School, Ralph R. McKee CTE High School in Staten Island, New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, Stuyvesant High School, Seward Park High School, Washington Irving High School, and the High School of Fashion Industries, all in Manhattan. In 1967, he earned a master's degree at Brooklyn College, and in the late 1960s he spent 18 months at Trinity College in Dublin, failing to earn his PhD before returning to New York City.

In a 1997 New York Times essay, McCourt wrote about his experiences teaching immigrant mothers at New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn.^[6]

McCourt won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography (1997)^[7] and one of the annual National Book Critics Circle Awards (1996)^[8] for his bestselling 1996 memoir, Angela's Ashes, which details his impoverished childhood from Brooklyn to Limerick. Three years later, a movie version of Angela's Ashes opened to mixed reviews.^[9] Northern Irish actor Michael Legge played McCourt as a teenager.^[10] McCourt also authored 'Tis (1999), which continues the narrative of his life, picking up from the end of Angela's Ashes and focusing on his life after he returned to New York. He subsequently wrote Teacher Man (2005) which detailed his teaching experiences and the challenges of being a teacher.

McCourt was accused of greatly exaggerating his family's impoverished upbringing by many Limerick natives, including Richard Harris.^[3][11] McCourt's own mother had denied the accuracy of his stories shortly before her death in 1981, shouting from the audience during a stage performance of his recollections that it was "all a pack of lies."^[3] However, at the very least, many of his Stuyvesant High School students remembered quite clearly the mordant childhood anecdotes that he continually told during sessions of his senior-level Creative Writing (E7W-E8W) elective ^[12].

McCourt wrote the book for a 1997 musical entitled The Irish… and How They Got That Way, which featured an eclectic mix of Irish music; everything from the traditional "Danny Boy" to U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."^[13]

McCourt was married first, in August 1961 (divorced 1979), to Alberta Small, with whom he had a daughter, Margaret.^[3] He married a second time in November 1984 (divorced 1989) to the psychotherapist Cheryl Floyd.^[3] He married his third wife, Ellen Frey McCourt, in August 1994, and they lived in New York City and Roxbury, Connecticut.^[3]

In his free time, McCourt took up the casual sport of rowing. He once sank his WinTech recreational single scull on the Mohawk River in Upstate New York, and had to be rescued by a local rowing team.

It was announced in May 2009 that McCourt had been treated for melanoma and that he was in remission, undergoing home chemotherapy.^[14] On July 19, 2009, he died from the cancer, with meningeal complications,^[1] at a hospice in Manhattan.^[4]

He was survived by Ellen, his daughter Margaret, his granddaughter Chiara, grandsons Frank, Jack, and Avery, and three of his five brothers and their families.

McCourt was a member of the National Arts Club and was a recipient of the Award of Excellence from The International Center in New York. In 1998, McCourt was honored as the Irish American of the Year by Irish America magazine. In 2002 he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Western Ontario.

In October 2009, the New York City Department of Education, along with several partners from the community, founded the Frank McCourt High School of Writing, Journalism, and Literature, a screened-admissions public high school. The school is located on the Upper West Sideof Manhattan on West 84th Street. The Frank McCourt School is one of four small schools designated to fill the campus of the former Louis D. Brandeis High School. The Frank McCourt High School began classes September 2010. The first principal of the school is Danielle Salzberg, who previously served as acting principal at Khalil Gibran International Academy and as an assistant principal at Millennium High School in New York. Among the many community partners of the Frank McCourt school are the Columbia Journalism School and Symphony Space.

The Frank McCourt Museum was officially opened by Malachy McCourt in July 2011 at Leamy House, Hartstonge Street, Limerick.^[15] This Tudor-style building was formerly known as the Leamy School, the former school of Frank and his brother Malachy. The museum showcases the 1930s classroom of Leamy School and contains a collection of memorabilia, including items such as school books of the period and old photos, all donated by former pupils of the school. As well as having a large selection of Angela's Ashes memorabilia, the museum has recreated the McCourt home as described in the book using period pieces and props from the Angela's Ashes motion picture. The downstairs of the museum houses the Dr. Frank McCourt Creative Writing centre.^[16]