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Black activist Virna Canson dies at 81
Friday April 18, 2003SACRAMENTO (AP) Virna Canson, a lifetime civil rights activist and head of the NAACP on the West Coast during the 1970s and 1980s, died Monday at her home in Sacramento of kidney cancer. She was 81.
Known as a tireless leader, Canson played a role in many of biggest political events of her day. She made a controversial vote to seat black delegates from Mississippi during the 1964 Democratic National Convention. She helped in the reconstruction of the Watts community in Los Angeles after the 1965 riots. She was also instrumental in getting the Bakke case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, which ruled that race could be used as a factor but not the sole factor in admission decisions by state universities.
She took over leadership of the western region of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1974, which includes California, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Arizona and Hawaii. She served 14 years.
Canson was born in rural Oklahoma into a politically active family. Her father once served as mayor of an all-black community, Lima, Okla. She graduated from Alabama's Tuskegee Institute, where she met her future husband, Clarence Canson, a tailoring major from California. They married in 1940 and returned to his home in Sacramento.
She is survived by her daughter, Faythe Canson of Sacramento; son, Dr. Clarence Canson of El Sobrante, and two grandchildren. Her husband died in 1989.
A memorial service is scheduled April 22 in Sacramento.
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