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Willie Barrow | Minister, activist, 90

The Rev. Willie Barrow, 90, a frontline civil rights fighter for decades and a mentor to younger generations of activists, died Thursday in Chicago.

In this Aug. 2008 photo, the Rev. Willie T. Barrow, chairman emeritus of the Rainbow/Push Coalition from Chicago, dances at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Barrow, a longtime civil right activist, died Thursday, March 12, 2015, at a hospital where she was being treated for a blood clot in her lung. She was 90. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
In this Aug. 2008 photo, the Rev. Willie T. Barrow, chairman emeritus of the Rainbow/Push Coalition from Chicago, dances at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Barrow, a longtime civil right activist, died Thursday, March 12, 2015, at a hospital where she was being treated for a blood clot in her lung. She was 90. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)Read more

The Rev. Willie Barrow, 90, a frontline civil rights fighter for decades and a mentor to younger generations of activists, died Thursday in Chicago.

Ms. Barrow was a field organizer for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., marched on Washington and Selma in the 1960s, and more recently focused concern on Chicago's gun violence and changes to the Voting Rights Act.

She helped organize sit-ins and boycotts in the South with civil rights icons including King, Rosa Parks, and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy. Alongside the Rev. Jesse Jackson, she cofounded the Chicago chapter of Operation Breadbasket, which would become Operation PUSH.

Ms. Barrow was born in Burton, Texas, studied theology at a seminary in Oregon, and moved to Chicago in 1945. - AP