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MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Gwendolyn Patton, a lifelong activist and a figure in the civil rights community, has died.
Patton, 73, was the first female Student Government Association president at Tuskegee Institute and was retired from Trenholm State Community College, where she worked as the Special Collections on Montgomery Pioneer Voting Rights Activists archivist.
Born in Detroit on Oct. 14, 1943, she passed away on hursday, May 11, 2017.
Jeanine Wilson is Patton's cousin, and hopes Patton leaves behind the message that once a person is afforded rights, that they then "have a responsibility to make sure it remains that way.
"Your responsibility to make sure that you don't in-turn mistreat other people. She was a fighter, but her thing was to fight intellectually, spiritually, and when you do that, you don't have to fight physically."
In a Dec. 7, 2015, letter to the editor in the Montgomery Advertiser, Patton wrote of the 60th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott:
No one person starts, let alone sustains, a movement. A movement is only made possible when there is a collective vision, mission, strategy, working hands, walking feet, listening ears and resources. A movement is not spontaneous; it is a cumulative set of human circumstances over a period of time when a critical mass of people in one accord say, "enough is enough," and we are not going to take disrespect anymore.
State Sen. Hank Sanders, of Selma,...