Died. Alberta Christine Williams King, 69, mother of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (see THE NATION).

Died. Delbert Eugene Webb, 75, Phoenix-based real-estate baron; of lung cancer; in Rochester, Minn. Webb was a promising semipro baseball pitcher before illness made him give up the game at 27. In 1929 he started his own construction company with one cement mixer and a few dozen wheelbarrows and tools, ultimately parlayed it into the Del E. Webb Corp., a $100 million empire of hotels, offices, planned retirement communities and other developments. With the late Dan Topping, Webb owned the New York Yankees during their postwar years of glory.

Died. Juan Domingo Peron, 78, President of Argentina (see THE WORLD).

Died. Haj Amin el Husseini, 80, fanatic former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem; of a heart ailment; in Beirut. Haj Amin, whose elfin, almost angelic appearance concealed a wily, often ruthless nature, joined the British-backed Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I, and in 1921 was made Mufti (a jurist who interprets Moslem religious law), in effect leader, of Palestine's Arabs. He then turned against the British, beginning a long career of violent opposition to Jewish settlement in Palestine. He instigated anti-Zionist riots, wiped out Arab opponents, and was driven into exile by the British. After years of cloak-and-daggery in various Arab lands, he served Adolf Hitler by broadcasting anti-Allied propaganda to the Moslem world from Berlin. He later lived regally in Cairo and Beirut, ever plotting against the Jewish state.

Died. John Crowe Ransom, 86, poet, critic and longtime editor of the Kenyan Review; in Gambier, Ohio. Widely acclaimed for his poems, which were distinguished by compressed emotion expressed in courtly rhetoric, Ransom was also an influential teacher. As an instructor at Vanderbilt University in the 1920s, the Tennessee-born Rhodes scholar shepherded the Fugitives, a flock of young Southern poets (including Allen Tate and Robert Perm Warren) who celebrated the virtues of Southern agrarianism in defiance of the machine age. In 1937 Ransom moved to Kenyon College, where he attracted such poets as Randall Jarrell and Robert Lowell, and fathered the New Criticism, which stressed rigorous textual analysis rather than the study of an author's life and ideas. "A professional critic," Ransom once said, "is a man who, in dealing with a work of art, creates a little work of art in its honor."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.