- In 1942, at age 21, she went to the county courthouse to register to vote. The white officials told her that she first had to recite the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, a type of literacy test used during the Jim Crow era to prevent black people from voting. To their surprise, she recited it perfectly.
- As a young woman, she farmed for a living. She later did packing work at a factory before taking university classes to become a teacher. She was a phonics teacher and a librarian assistant before retiring at 70, then worked as a substitute teacher and tutored children into her 80s.
- She was an advocate for African American voting rights. She was best known as a lead plaintiff in a North Carolina lawsuit that was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016. It defeated what many civil rights activists described as modern-day efforts to suppress blacks and other minority voters with discriminatory practices at the polls.
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