Civil Rights Pioneer. She was one of the mainstays of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) that created a grassroots movement in the rural South during the 1960s Civil Right Era when racial tensions frequently produced violence against blacks who campaigned for equal rights. Her mother died when she was three years old, and she and her sisters were raised by her father, an uneducated tobacco factory and steel mill worker. After graduating from high school, she attended Shaw University, majoring in English. She then transferred to Virginia State University where she graduated with her bachelor's degree. While there, she became involved with a local church led by Wyatt T. Walker, the regional head for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Soon after that, she met Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who convinced her and Watt Walker to move to Atlanta, Georgia to assist in the establishment of the SCLC. Her biggest achievement in the movement was the Citizenship Education Program, a program meant to help blacks register to vote and to reinforce in them an awareness that their voting right was inviolable. The program also taught dealing with basic everyday needs, as well as passing literacy tests for voting. As the SCLC's Educational Director, she was arguably the highest ranked female member of the organization. She died at the age of 88.
Civil Rights Pioneer. She was one of the mainstays of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) that created a grassroots movement in the rural South during the 1960s Civil Right Era when racial tensions frequently produced violence against blacks who campaigned for equal rights. Her mother died when she was three years old, and she and her sisters were raised by her father, an uneducated tobacco factory and steel mill worker. After graduating from high school, she attended Shaw University, majoring in English. She then transferred to Virginia State University where she graduated with her bachelor's degree. While there, she became involved with a local church led by Wyatt T. Walker, the regional head for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Soon after that, she met Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who convinced her and Watt Walker to move to Atlanta, Georgia to assist in the establishment of the SCLC. Her biggest achievement in the movement was the Citizenship Education Program, a program meant to help blacks register to vote and to reinforce in them an awareness that their voting right was inviolable. The program also taught dealing with basic everyday needs, as well as passing literacy tests for voting. As the SCLC's Educational Director, she was arguably the highest ranked female member of the organization. She died at the age of 88.
Bio by: William Bjornstad
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