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A resolution honoring Rosetta Miller-Perry on the occasion of her 90th birthday.
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WHEREAS, Rosetta Miller-Perry, known as Queen mother of the Black press is a United States Navy veteran, businesswoman, educator, journalist, mortician, and is a distinguished and influential community leader in Nashville, having dedicated her life by fighting against institutional racism; and
WHEREAS, Rosetta Miller-Perry born Rosetta Irvin on July 7, 1934 in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, is the third oldest descendant in the Anderson and Mary Hall-Irvin family of nine; and
WHEREAS, Miller-Perry, a 1952 alumna of Coraopolis Senior High School, Coraopolis, PA. and
WHEREAS, Miller-Perry received a bachelor's degree from the University of Memphis (1956), Mortuary Science degree, (DMS) from John A. Gupton College of Mortuary Science (1957), and matriculated at TSU, Herzl Junior College (Chicago) and the University School of Law at Howard University (Washington, D.C.); and
WHEREAS, in April 1960 Miller-Perry was actively involved as a federal official with the U S Commission on Civil Rights, during the civil rights movement in Washington, D.C. and Nashville, collaborating with Atty. Z. Alexander Looby, Curley McGruder, Reverend Kelly Miller Smith, Sr. and other civil rights leaders; and
WHEREAS, in the Fall of 1968, Miller-Perry joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and SCLC members in Memphis and witnessed the chaos before, during and after his murder while employed as a Federal observer for the U S Commission on Civil Rights, Washington, D.C.; and
WHEREAS, Miller-Perry transferred to the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1975 and became the First Black Female Area Director in the South retiring 1990; and
WHEREAS, Miller-Perry in 1991 established Perry and Perry Associates which owns the longest continuously published African American newspaper in Middle Tennessee and the only African American woman publisher to own a newspaper building in Tennes...
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