When combined with a lively speaking style and some gift as a comedian, this made him a person of some note, mostly in but perhaps outside his local Mormon circles.
Born and raised in New York City, Cherry as a teenager was in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom during which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech.
In the early 1970s Cherry was part of the Mormon-rock band Sons of Mosiah, which had Orrin Hatch as their manager.
In 1978, after LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball received divine revelation allowing black Mormon men to receive the Priesthood and act on behalf of God on Earth, Cherry sought and was called on a Mormon mission to Oakland, California.
In 1985 Jessie Embry hired Cherry to interview black Mormons as part of BYU's LDS African-American Oral History Project.
[2] He was still directing this oral history project in 1988 when he spoke at the Charles Redd Center in a meeting on the tenth anniversary of the revelation of the priesthood.