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Johnetta Randolph Haley knew she wanted to be a music educator early on. She broke racial barriers and founded Head Start in East St. Louis. She died at age 97.
Johnetta Randolph Haley, a music teacher who, over the vehement objections of white parents, helped integrate a Kirkwood middle school after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down school segregation in 1954, has died. She was 97.
“Fifteen hundred people signed a petition they didn’t want me or the other three (teachers) only because we were black,” Haley said in a 2018 awards program video. “But after one year, they wanted their kids in my class.”