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Joan C. Browning


She is a Greenbrier County, WV writer and lecturer.  "Shiloh Witness," an autobiographic chapter in the volume Deep In Our Hearts:  Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement (University of Georgia Press, 2000) and article, "Invisible Revolutionaries:  White Women in Civil Rights Movement Historiography," Fall 1996, Journal of Women's History, describe her experiences as a 1960s Freedom Rider and social justice activist.  She uses her reflections on the freedom struggle to lecture on women's, civil rights movement, religious, and Southern history.  Further information available at web page http://myweb.wvnet.edu/~oma00013/.  She was one of 100 West Virginians chosen to advise Governor Cecil Underwood's Race Initiative.  In recognition of her scholarship, service, commitment to civil rights and social change, and advocacy for peace, The West Virginia Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Commission gave her its highest honor in 2001, the Governor's Living the Dream Award. She was also inducted in first class of the governor's Civil Rights Hall of Fame. She was the first Business and Professional Women's Women Mean Business Woman of the Year, and received the West Virginia University's first Martin Luther King, Jr. Achievement Award.

Samples of her women's issues activism are:  The West Virginia Women's Commission has designated her a woman leader for many years and awarded her its Celebrate Women Mountaineer Spirit Award.  With Dr. Barbara Howe, she is co-chair of the Institute for Women's Policy Research Status of West Virginia Women research project.  She completed two five-year terms and is completing a third five-year appointment as the "citizen" representative of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals' District III Fatality Review committee, an effort to help the courts present murder by domestic partner.

 She promotes public education at all levels.  She was a two-term Trustee of Greenbrier County Public Library, an officer in the Trustee Section of the West Virginia Library Association, and was one of two trustees chosen by the West Virginia Library Commission to teach new trustees.  She helped lead a success bond issue to build Western Greenbrier Junior High School, chaired the Greenbrier County Board of Education's facilities review committee, and volunteers in the "creating a caring community" program at Eastern Greenbrier Junior High School.  She is a leader of Greenbrier Community College Foundation in its advocacy for and support of state higher education in the Greenbrier Valley.

  

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