In Memoriam - Hilda H.M. Mason

It will be hard to imagine DC politics without Hilda Mason. The Washington Post reports:

Hilda H.M. Mason, 91, an at-large member of the D.C. Council, the grande dame of city politics and a passionate and sharp-tongued champion of such issues as home rule, education and the welfare of children, died yesterday at Washington Hospital Center. [...]

Mason was a veteran of the civil rights movement, a former teacher, a formidable committee chairman and the self-described "grandmother of the world." She also was virtually unbeatable at the polls despite running on the ticket of the minuscule D.C. Statehood Party. With the late chairman David A. Clarke, she was regarded as the council's liberal conscience on social issues.

"Our city has lost a true legend today," Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said in a statement. "From the earliest days of Home Rule to the present, as an elected official and a private citizen, Hilda Mason was a force behind the voting rights movement and the education of thousands of young people." [...]

Hilda Holland M. Mason was born June 14, 1916, near Altavista, Va. She attended Virginia Seminary in Lynchburg and St. Paul's College in Lawrenceville before moving to Washington in 1945. She graduated from Miner Teachers College. Miner later became part of D.C. Teachers College and UDC. She received a master's degree in education at D.C. Teachers and did further graduate work at the State University of New York in Plattsburgh and at Catholic University.

She was a teacher, counselor and administrator in the D.C. public school system for 19 years until she was elected to the Board of Education from Ward 4.

Mason was a member of the American Personnel and Guidance Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the D.C. Counselors Association, the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, the National Women's Political Caucus, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, the Links Inc., Women's Strike for Peace, the United Nations Association of the United States of America and All Souls Unitarian Church.