Margaret Bush Wilson was an American lawyer and activist. Wilson broke many barriers as an African-American woman throughout her professional career.
Biography
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she successfully managed a St. Louis law firm for more than 40 years. Wilson completed her undergraduate degree at Talladega College. She graduated with honors in 1940, after studying in India for six months, as a recipient of the Juliette Derricotte Memorial Fund for Undergraduate Study in India, which had been established by Sue Bailey Thurman. Wilson was in the second class of the Lincoln University of Missouri School of Law, which had one other woman enrolled. She passed the bar and was the second African-American woman admitted to practice in Missouri. In 1946, Wilson's father, James T. Bush, a real estate broker, was instrumental in helping the J. D. Shelley family buy a home. The family was later ordered out of the home when the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the racial restrictive covenant governing the property was enforceable. As a young lawyer, Mrs. Wilson was counsel for the Real Estate Brokers Association, which was formed at her father's initiative to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelley v. Kraemer that such covenants were unenforceable in the courts. In 1954, Wilson celebrated with colleagues and friends when the Brown vs. Board of Education decision was handed down. The next year, her five-year-old son started kindergarten at one of the city's first integrated schools. Wilson's professional experience included serving as United States Attorney for the Rural Electrification Administration of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Assistant Attorney General of Missouri. She was Chair of the NAACP National Board of Directors, serving nine terms in that office. She was Board Chair of two historically African-American colleges, St. Augustine's College and Talladega, and also served on numerous boards for national companies and nonprofit organizations. She was a trustee emerita of Washington University in St. Louis and Webster University, and was Chair of Law Day 2000 for the American Bar Association.
