Chuck Burris, who became Stone Mountain’s first African-American mayor and lived in the house of the James Venable, the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, has died.

He would have been 58 years old on March 5.

A statement from Burris’ family on Tuesday said he died on Feb. 12 after years of battling amyloidosis, a group of diseases in which proteins accumulate in the body's organs and tissue and damage the structure and function of the tissues.

Funeral services were held Feb. 19 at Parish of St. Monica and St. James Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C.

State Rep. Billy Mitchell, who served on the Stone Mountain City Council with Burris, said he will be missed.

“Chuck was not only an intelligent and conscientious servant,” Mitchell said, “he was a certainly a very good friend.”

Burris had followed his wife, Marcia Baird Burris, to Washington where she had landed a job at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum. He was employed at Lockheed Martin in Baltimore.

He was elected to the Stone Mountain City Council in 1991. Six years later, he was elected mayor and served from 1997 to 2001. During his first term, Burris was invited to President Bill Clinton’s White House and in 1998 sat next to Hillary Rodham Clinton during president’s State of the Union speech.

He also served as president of the Georgia Conference of Black Mayors.

His last public service in DeKalb was in September 2006, when he was picked by the DeKalb County School Board to finish three months on the term of former school board Simone Manning-Moon, who resigned her seat to take a job out of town.

Burris was born in New Orleans, La., on March 5, 1951.

In 1967, at the age of 16, Burris enrolled at Morehouse College as a Merrill Scholar. While at Morehouse he attended Saturday seminars, which were often taught by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions be sent in Burris’ memory to The Amyloidosis Foundation. Amyloidosis is a group of diseases in which different types of proteins accumulate in the body’s organs and tissues. The deposits damage the structure and function of the tissues and cause serious disease, which is often fatal if it affects major organs and is not treated. For information on the foundation, visit www.amyloidosisresearchfoundation.org.

Mitchell said Burris was in need of a kidney a year ago but was too ill to undergo the transplant.

Condolences can be sent to: Marcia Baird Burris, c/o Johnson and Jenkins Funeral Home, 716 Kennedy St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20011. 202-882-8800.