ST. LOUIS — Pioneering civil-rights lawyer Margaret Bush Wilson, a former national chairwoman of the NAACP, has died in her native St. Louis. She was 90.
Wilson died Tuesday night at Barnes-Jewish Hospital of multiple organ failure, said her son, Robert E. Wilson III.
“She just loved working,” Robert Wilson said. “Her gasoline in life was giving, and the law profession was a perfect vehicle for that.”
Margaret Bush was born in 1919. She was the second black woman to pass the Missouri Bar, after graduating from the Lincoln University School of Law, a “separate but equal” institution created for blacks in Missouri.
She and her husband, Robert E. Wilson Jr., started a law firm in St. Louis after World War II.
She was on the legal team in the historic Shelley vs. Kramer case, which challenged housing covenants that excluded blacks and Jews from neighborhoods in St. Louis and elsewhere.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that the covenants were unenforceable.
“She was a pioneering figure and a real path-breaker,” said Julian Bond, chairman of the national board of the NAACP. “She was always a gracious lady but had a will of steel. I can tell you, they don’t make them like her anymore.”
After presiding over the city and state chapters of the NAACP, Wilson became the first black woman to head the national NAACP board, serving nine terms starting in 1975.
Besides her son, Wilson is survived by a sister, two grandchildren, and several nieces and nephews.
