Mr. Merritt developed one of the first suburban housing communities for African-Americans, Excelsior Village in Upper Chichester. He was also known for his community activism, for which he received a Freedom Fund Award from the West Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP in 1985. Mr. Merritt also wrote a biography, From Captivity to Freedom: The Life of George Washington Carver.
Born in Seville, Ga., the fourth of 10 children, Mr. Merritt was raised on his father's farm in Lumberton, Miss., where he learned to ride horses and keep the financial books for his family's timber business.
Mr. Merritt served in the Army during World War I and graduated from Tuskegee Institute in 1923 with a bachelor's degree in business administration. He opened the R.H. Merritt Real Estate firm in West Philadelphia in 1932.
"Being a black Realtor during that time was not a simple matter," Mr. Merritt said in a 1985 newspaper interview. "I remember being threatened with shotguns when I wanted to buy some land."
But Mr. Merritt was a determined man.
"Nothing ever defeated him," said Fred S.A. Johnson, a college classmate and longtime friend. "No matter what the obstacles were, he felt he could conquer them."
In 1936, Mr. Merritt bought a 12-acre farm in Upper Chichester, envisioning a suburban development for African-Americans, who then were living either on farms or in cities.
At the time, local politicians resisted the idea, and told African- Americans who were thinking of moving to Mr. Merritt's development that they could not move out of their voting districts, according to Mildred Dunston Allen, one of Mr. Merritt's nieces.
