Raymond V. Haysbert Sr., whose Parks Sausage Co. became the first black-owned business in the U.S. to go public in 1969, and the famous commercial of a little kid sitting at a breakfast table and yelling to his mom: ‘More Parks sausages please!’

Born in poverty, Mr. Haysbert later became a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, serving in Africa and Italy

in World War II before settling in

Baltimore. There, he joined the company started by Henry Parks that became well known throughout the Northeast by advertisements featuring a hungry boy asking, “More Parks Sausages, Mom, please!”

Former Baltimore congressman and NAACP leader Kweisi Mfume said that in addition to his role as chief executive at Parks, Mr. Haysbert was a political adviser and community leader who became “synonymous with the struggle for entrepreneurship among African Americans at a time when it wasn’t very popular.”

Mr. Hays

bert was also campaign treasurer for Sen. Harry Cole, the first black state senator in Annapolis, and helped integrate Baltimore politics by working to get Parks elected to the council in 1963.

Mr. Haysbert, who had suffered several heart attacks in recent years, remained chairman of the Greater Baltimore Urban League until his death, bringing the organization back from the brink of bankruptcy.

Born in Cincinnati, Mr. Haysbert worked for a coal company before joining the Army Air Corps. He is survived by his wife and four children.

Brian Haysbert said his father always had time to help those trying to start their own businesses, and taught him that “success is always tied to someone else and not just to yourself.”

“He always figured he didn’t have enough time to get all he wanted accomplished,” said another son, Reginald Haysbert, 62. “He was terrifically motivated to make the world a better place.”

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake said that Mr. Haysbert’s death marked the end of an era.

Mfume remembered Mr. Haysbert inviting him to his home, where they discussed his political future in a sunroom at the house overlooking Lake Montebello.

“There were a lot of people who sat in that house, there in the sun room, who got lectures on life from Ray Haysbert,” the former NAACP president said. “When he pulled you in, you knew you were in an elite class. Everybody wanted to be asked to be in that sun room.”

Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake will be one of many who will attend his funeral.

It will be held at noon on Wednesday at the Empowerment Temple on Primrose Avenue.  Raymond Haysbert leaves behind a wife and four children.