James Buford remembered as longtime Urban League leader ‘respected by all’

A pillar of the civic community, James H. Buford mingled with both corporate executives and civil rights activists.

He was “as comfortable in the suite as on the street,” Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, said on Saturday at Buford’s funeral.

Hundreds filed into St. Alphonsus “Rock” Church in the Grand Center neighborhood on Saturday to pay tribute to Buford, the longtime head of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis.

Buford, who led the organization here from 1985 until his 2013 retirement, is credited with reinvigorating a sleepy, docile chapter in St. Louis and turning it into the Urban League’s “best affiliate in the country,” Morial said, and “I dare say one of the strongest and most impactful community service organizations anywhere in America.”