John Gammon, Jr. was born in Marion and graduated in 1931 from Arkansas AM&N (now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff) where he was quarterback of the football team. He served as a junior analyst in the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, and founded a number of poultry associations in Woodruff County. Mr. Gammon organized the Negro division of the Arkansas Farm Bureau in 1948 and served as president of the 3,500 member organization until 1965 when it merged with the Arkansas Farm Bureau. He received the Little Rock Sertoma Clubs Service to Mankind award in 1973, the Headliner Award from the Memphis Gridiron Club in 1982 and humanitarian awards from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. He was a past member of the Crittenden Memorial Hospital Board of Directors, a director of the Crittenden County Sheltered Workshop, a member of the Commodity Credit Corp. board and a member of the Arkansas Agricultural Stabilization Conservation Service Committee and served on the University of Arkansas Development Council. Mr. Gammon was well known for putting on an annual fish fry and wild game dinner that was attended by hundreds, including many prominent politicians and businessmen. The money from the annual dinners went to the John Gammon Scholarship Foundation, which Mr. Gammon started in 1967 to provide college scholarships for black young people “who could not otherwise go to college.” Senator Dale Bumpers called Mr. Gammon “a very good friend.” He said Mr. Gammon was well known not only in Arkansas but other states and in the nation’s Capitol. “He had the ability to open a lot of doors,” Bumpers said.