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 THE KIDS' CORNER Milliones pushed for quality education Margaret Milliones, a former Pittsburgh school board member and professor of black studies at the University of Pittsburgh, cared greatly for the students in the Pittsburgh public schools and wanted them all to have a quality education -- together. Her main focus was to rid the city of segregation. Milliones felt integration was the sure way for children of all ethnicities to get a sound education. Though ''soft spoken and polite,'' her zeal earned her the name ''Integration Crusader.'' ''We have to put aside all our various prejudices and fears and go about the business of designing a desegregated educational system that is par excellence,'' Milliones once said. In 1976, her fight for integration got her elected to the school board, where she represented the Hill District, East Liberty and South Oakland. On the board, she fought to retain middle schools and to strengthen the district's ability to abolish segregation. Her outspokenness even gained her respect from opponents. Milliones was also active in the community, serving on the boards of the local and National Urban Leagues and on the American Civil Liberties union. Milliones was 38 when she died of a massive stroke in 1978, and later that year she was posthumously rewarded for her long years of active struggle when Herron Hill Middle School in the Hill was renamed Margaret Milliones Middle School. It was a tribute to her involvement and positivity, say those who pushed for the name change. Milliones was born in Decatur, Ala., and graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, with a bachelor's degree in psychology. She received a masters degree in sociology from Atlanta University in Georgia.. She taught at Morehouse College in Atlanta and at South Carolina State College before she moved to Pittsburgh in the '60s. EL10 -- By Angela Dyer and E. Dyer
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