Pioneering Civil Rights Lawyer Dies

Pioneering civil rights lawyer Margaret Bush Wilson, the first woman to chair the NAACP’s board of directors, has died at the age of 90.

Wilson graduated from Lincoln University School of Law, created as a “separate-but-equal” school for blacks in Missouri, and was the second black woman to pass the state bar, the Associated Press reports.

She was a member of the legal team in Shelley v. Kramer, the U.S. Supreme Court case that held restrictive covenants barring real estate sales to minorities are unenforceable.

“The NAACP has lost a champion and the world has lost a pioneer,” said NAACP board of directors chairman Julian Bond in a press release.