Amanda L. Phillips, a community leader and educator who won a YWCA Lifetime Achievement Award for her work against racism, died Saturday. She was 79.
Phillips' daughter, Lola Mc-Laurian, said her mother always saw people for who they were inside.
"She had a great love for people and respected the differences in people," McLaurian said. "She worked really hard to eradicate and eliminate racism. Everything she did was with the goal of making sure that all people respected each other."
In retirement, Phillips was a volunteer facilitator for YWCA forums and workshops focused on discussions about racism.
"Institutional racism is probably the most damaging form of racism. So I work to change attitudes," Phillips told the Arizona Daily Star in 2002. "Some people truly perceive that white is better. They genuinely believe that."
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Phillips was born in Oklahoma and trained teachers throughout the nation in an early-education model still used today. In 1975, she was hired to train school districts in the University of Arizona's Tucson Early Education Model. Via the integrated teaching approach, a cooking project might teach reading, math and science.
Her life took a turn in the early 1990s, when her passion for civil rights presented a new calling. She and friend Virginia Barleycorn — whose UA Police officer son, Cpl. Kevin Barleycorn, was killed in the line of duty — lobbied the city to create the Rabbi Albert T. Bilgray Make a Difference Award.
Then, after four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King, and rioting ensued, Phillips organized Women Confronting Racism, a monthly discussion group that brought together a wide range of women — early 20s to late 70s, Anglo, Hispanic and black — to discuss race.
She also helped with "Alternatives to Violence" prison workshops, was on the Race Relations Committee at St. Mark's Presbyterian Church and helped plan local Martin Luther King Jr. interfaith commemorations. Additionally, she lent support to numerous local groups, including Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona, Shalom House, the American Friends Service Committee and United Way of Southern Arizona.
Visitation is scheduled for 7 p.m to 9 p.m. Thursday at Eastlawn Mortuary, 5801 E. Grant Road. A funeral service is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at St. Mark's, 3809 E. Third St.
Phillips was preceded in death by her husband, also a community leader and educator, Clyde K. Phillips, and by her son, Clyde H. Phillips. In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her sister, Bobbye Humphrey, brother-in-law John Phillips, daughter Gwendolyn Phillips-Sykes, daughter-in-law Sherrie Bartlett-Phillips, five grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and many other relatives and friends.
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