"Margaret Bush Wilson"(1919-2009)

Prominent 20th century Civil Rights leader was born in in St.Louis Missouri to James and Margaret Bush;her father was a real estate agent and her mother a teacher.Her passion for the civil rights movement was instilled early;both of her parents were involved with the St.Louis branch of the NAACP.After graduating from Sumner High School in St.Louis in 1935,she received a scholarship to attend all black Talledga College in Alabama lost the scholarship after being re-interviewed by an official.Incensed by this injustice,George Brantley,her principal,called on the faculty to raise funds to replace the scholarship.(This act of good faith helped to influence her charitable work in later in life.)She graduated from Talladega in 1939 with a degree in economics.She returned to St.Louis and soon became linked to many major civil rights efforts.She became the second woman to attend the law school at Lincoln University.This school was created after the Supreme Court case Gaines v.Canada (1938),which ruled that the state of Missouri must provide an equal law school after denying a black student admittance into the University of Missouri Law School.After passing her bar exam,Margaret became the second black woman to became a practing  attorney in the state of Missouri and in 1946 established a law firm with Robert Wilson,in 1944.Her first influential role came in 1948 with the nationally prominent Shelley v.Kraemer case in 1948Her father aided the Shelleys,an African American Family,in purchasing a home in 1946 from which they were later removed because of racially restrictive covenants.Margaret chaired the Black Real Estate Brokers Associations in St.Louis as a real estate lawyer.The Association along with the local and nationally NAACP initiated the lawsuit and won the case with a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court ruiling which declared the covenants legally unenforceable.In 1962,Margaret now a an NAACP activist became President of the Missouri conference of association branches.Throughout this time she was successful in promoting integration and equal employment opportunities in Missouri and the Midwest.In 1975 she became the first woman to serve as Chair of the national board of the NAACP.Her well-publicized conflict with Rev.Benjamin Hooks,the NAACP'S Executive Director,led to her suspending Benjamin in 1983 after he failed to cooperate with an audit of the organization.Soon after that incident,she lost her bid to be re-elected chair of the NACCP and left the organization at the end of 1983.She continued serving the civil rights movement with her role as chairman for various colleges.Including Talladega and corporations such as the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York.She died in her father's home in St.Louis.