May 19, 2014

2014Simon Andrews, English motorcycle racer (born 1982)^[†]

Simon Neil Stuart Andrews was a British motorcycle racer. He competed in the British Superbike Championship for the MSS Kawasaki aboard a Kawasaki ZX10-R and RAF Reserves team, aboard a Honda CBR1000RR. He died as a result of a crash when racing on a road course in Northern Ireland.

2014Jack Brabham, Australian race car driver (born 1926)^[†]

Sir John Arthur Brabham was an Australian racing driver and motorsport executive, who competed in Formula One from 1955 to 1970. Brabham won three Formula One World Drivers' Championship titles, which he won in 1959, 1960 and 1966, and won 14 Grands Prix across 16 seasons. He co-founded Brabham in 1960, leading the team to two World Constructors' Championship titles, and remains the only driver to have won the World Drivers' Championship in an eponymous car.

2014Sam Greenlee, American author and poet (born 1930)^[†]

Samuel Eldred Greenlee, Jr. was an American writer of fiction and poetry. He is best known for his novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door, first published in March 1969 in London by the recently founded small imprint Allison & Busby, having been rejected by dozens of mainstream publishers, and received much critical attention, including extracts being printed in The Observer newspaper. The novel was subsequently made into the 1973 movie of the same name, directed by Ivan Dixon and co-produced and written by Greenlee, that is now considered a cult classic.

2014Vincent Harding, American historian and scholar (born 1931)^[†]

Vincent Gordon Harding was an African-American pastor, historian, and scholar of various topics with a focus on American religion and society. A social activist, he was perhaps best known for his work with and writings about Martin Luther King Jr., whom Harding knew personally. Besides having authored numerous books such as There Is A River, Hope and History, and Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero, he served as co-chairperson of the social unity group Veterans of Hope Project and as Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. When Harding died on May 19, 2014, his daughter, Rachel Elizabeth Harding, publicly eulogized him on the Veterans of Hope Project website. 

2014Gabriel Kolko, American historian and author (born 1932)^[†]

Gabriel Morris Kolko was an American historian. His research interests included American capitalism and political history, the Progressive Era, and U.S. foreign policy in the 20th century. One of the best-known revisionist historians to write about the Cold War, he was also credited as "an incisive critic of the Progressive Era and its relationship to the American empire." U.S. historian Paul Buhle summarized Kolko's career when he described him as "a major theorist of what came to be called Corporate Liberalism...[and] a very major historian of the Vietnam War and its assorted war crimes."

2014Zbigniew Pietrzykowski, Polish boxer (born 1934)^[†]

Zbigniew Jan Pietrzykowski was a Polish boxer.