Honorable Kathlyn Gilliam was the first African American female elected member of DISD Board of Trustees. Served 23 years and was elected President.Even before her tenure as a DISD trustee, she was a political activist, serving as the president of the then-segregated Dallas City Council PTA school board in the 1960s and as the secretary of the Texas Congress of Colored PTAs in the 1970s. She also was one of the many plaintiffs in a leading federal case to desegregate Dallas public schools and a founding member of the Political Congress of African-American Women. A founder of the Clean South Dallas/Fair Park, Inc., a school is named in her honor.
