(Info supplied by her sister, Mary M. Morgan 540 Ridgecrest Drive, Yellow Springs, OH 45387 937 767 1889 marymm540@sbcglobal.net on 2/5/07)
Virginia Steele 11/4/22 - 9/9/06
Afer being recruited by her friend, Bob Moses, Virginia Steele drove her VW bus from Berkeley, CA to Oxford, OH, June 1964, bringing Mario Savio and one other UC student for non-violence training in the Freedom Summer project.
Left for Greenville, MS two days after Chaney, Schwerner, Goodman were murdered. As the only trained (MLS, UC-Berkeley) librarian in the Freedom Summer project, she was given the responsibility of setting up Freedom Libraries from the thousands of donated books that had come from the north. Black boys and girls were eager to help take the books to barber shops, grocery stores, churches, where ever they could find a space for their cardboard "libraries".They loved riding in her VW van which they dubbed "The Freedom Bus".
She was hosted by Mrs. Lillie B. Royal with whom she became life-long friends.
Virginia returned to her job as a teacher in the Berkeley public schools in Sept.1964.
After retirement she lived at Friends House, Santa Rosa, CA and spent summers near Hillsboro, WV where she helped found www.highrocks.org for rural high school girls. Died, age 83, at Friends Care, Yellow Springs, OH September 9, 2006
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