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Scuba

(53,475 posts)
Mon Dec 23, 2013, 11:01 AM Dec 2013

Civil rights leader and educator Lauri Wynn remembered as trailblazer

http://www.jsonline.com/news/obituaries/civil-rights-leader-and-educator-lauri-wynn-remembered-as-trailblazer-b99169204z1-236942081.html

A longtime civil rights activist, union leader and teacher, Wynn died Wednesday at Froedtert Hospital of complications of breast cancer. She was 83.

...

Wynn taught in Milwaukee Public Schools and became the first African-American to become president of the state's largest teachers union, Wisconsin Education Association Council, in 1973. She became active in school desegregation efforts after arriving in Milwaukee from Chicago on the first day of school in 1965 at the beginning of the MPS school boycott.

Wynn developed a financial lobbying strategy to help with the desegregation effort, said her daughter, Hillary Wynn. "Education was her No. 1 focus, and when she became a teacher her focus of activism was in making education fair," she said.

"She said separate but equal couldn't work. She felt very strong about standards and seeing students succeed."
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