Muhammad I. Kenyatta; Civil Rights Activist, Law Professor

Muhammad I. Kenyatta, 47, a civil rights activist and visiting professor at the University of Buffalo Law School, who sued the government in 1969 after he received a letter supposedly forged by FBI agents that sought to discredit him. From 1972 to 1981, Kenyatta was vice chairman of the Pan African Skills Project, an educational program involving the United States, Tanzania and Ghana. He also was a representative to the U.N. non-governmental organizations section from 1972 to 1978. In the late 1960s, he worked for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, encouraging blacks to enter politics. It was during that period that he received a letter warning him to stay away from Tougaloo College in Mississippi, where he had been a student. He left Mississippi and later brought an unsuccessful suit claiming that the letter deprived him of his civil rights. On Jan. 3 in Buffalo, N.Y., of the complications of diabetes.