(AURN News) — Civil rights pioneer Brenda Travis has died at 81, according to Mississippi Today, leaving behind a legacy that began when she was only 15 years old.
In 1961, the McComb, Mississippi, native became a youth leader for Pike County’s NAACP and joined Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee protests against segregation.
After sitting at an all-white lunch counter in a Greyhound bus station, Travis was arrested and spent a month in jail. She was just 15 years old.
When she was released, she learned her high school had expelled her. She then led more than 100 students in a walkout to City Hall, where they were beaten and arrested.
Travis was later sent to a juvenile detention center and released only after agreeing to leave Mississippi. She finished school elsewhere but never stopped carrying the history of Mississippi’s freedom struggle, later founding an education foundation and writing her memoir.
Rest in peace, Brenda Travis.
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