At 99, Phyllis Lawhorn had spent a lifetime doing more than teaching lessons in classrooms. She helped break racial barriers in education, nurtured generations of students, and documented the history of one of Atlanta’s most significant Black communities. Her death in a house fire has left a profound loss for the city she spent decades serving.
Lawhorn died on last Tuesday morning after a fire tore through her home in Collier Heights, the historic northwest Atlanta neighborhood whose story she worked tirelessly to preserve. Fire officials said she was wheelchair-bound and did not survive the blaze…