Shirley McBay, Pioneering Mathematician, Is Dead at 86 [NY Times Obituary – paywall]
The first Black student to receive a doctorate from the University of Georgia, she devoted her life to advocating for diversity in science and math education.
By Clay Risen Dec. 14, 2021
“Left unattended, the resulting resegregation of U.S. education will ensure continued domination of this country’s academic, business and military leadership by nonminorities,” she wrote in the journal Issues in Science and Technology in 2003. “It will reinforce myths about racial superiority. It will further erode the hopes and aspirations of a rapidly growing and younger portion of our population, a population upon which America’s future well-being depends.”