MEMPHIS, Tenn. — “I just think that’s what has happened to me. I just came at the time when it was meant to happen,” said Educational Trailblazer Velma Lois Jones.
She’s the first woman to lead the local Memphis Teachers Union, the first woman to head the state education association in Tennessee, and the first woman to run the NAACP-Memphis branch.
“I just figured that it was my time. I just came at the right time,” said Jones.
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She grew up in a segregated South. She learned to read using books her mother brought home from a white family she worked for…