Rest In Power: Notable Black Folks Who We’ve Lost In 2024

Source: Charles Ommanney / Getty

UPDATED: 3:15 p.m. ET., October 21st, 2024

As we’ve come to understand year after year, day after day even, death is unfortunately an inevitable part of life. Still, as much of a fact as that may be, the blow of experiencing loss never gets any easier, nor does reporting on the subject in Black culture.

Thelma Mothershed Wair, a Member Of Little Rock Nine has passed away.

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Mothershed-Wair is best known as one of the Little Rock Nine, a group of African American students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. The Little Rock Nine consisted of Mothershed-Wair, Melba Pattillo Beals, Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Terrence Roberts, and Jefferson Thomas. This was a significant event in the American Civil Rights Movement, as it tested the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

Thelma Mothershed and her fellow students faced intense opposition and hostility but played a crucial role in the fight for educational equality. After her time at Central High, she went on to have a career in education and social work.

Mothershed-Wair was 83 years old.

Learn more below about who in our culture has passed away so far this year in 2024 Below