Mazie B. Hall, 103, of Wayne, teacher and civil-rights pioneer

Mazie Beatrice Hall, 103, of Wayne, a retired schoolteacher, local historian and civil-rights activist who helped pioneer efforts to integrate housing in the Philadelphia suburbs, died Sunday at Plymouth House, a nursing-care facility in Plymouth Meeting.

The historic efforts to ensure fair housing for minorities in the suburbs can be traced to a 1950s project developed by Miss Hall and her friend Margaret Collins, a Quaker activist.

They decided to fight the segregation that Miss Hall lived through every day as a resident of the historically black Mount Pleasant section of Tredyffrin. They started what they called "fellowship weekends." African Americans from Philadelphia were invited to spend the weekend with white residents who lived in the suburbs.

That experience led Collins to cofound Suburban Fair Housing Inc., a real estate agency that sold homes to black residents in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

Miss Hall lived all of her 103 years on the Main Line after her parents moved to the area from Virginia and Delaware.

She graduated from Tredyffrin-Easttown High School (now Conestoga High) and West Chester Normal School (now West Chester University).

She taught briefly in Trenton before taking a job as a principal of a new school in her Mount Pleasant community.

She later discovered that the school was to be segregated. A community furor ignited, leading to the creation of the Main Line branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

When the Mount Pleasant school was eventually integrated, Miss Hall was dismissed from her post. She took a job teaching adult night school until she secured a position in the Camden schools, where she remained until her retirement in 1962.

Miss Hall served as an officer in many community organizations, started a tutoring program in Mount Pleasant, and founded the Main Line Association of Black Business and Professional Women. An endowment at West Chester University and a park in Wayne are named in her honor.

Her community activism led to meetings with luminaries including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Marian Anderson. Memorabilia she collected chronicling her experiences make up the Mazie Beatrice Hall African Heritage Preservation Project, which will be housed at Eastern University in St. Davids.

Surviving are cousin Collien B. Robinson and several other distant cousins.

A viewing will be held 9 to 11 a.m. today at the Church of the Saviour, 651 N. Wayne Ave., Wayne. Services follow at 11 a.m. Burial will be at the Gulph Christian Cemetery, West Conshohocken.

Memorial donations may be made to the Mazie B. Hall Endowment, West Chester University, Alumni Resource Programs, Office of Development, West Chester, Pa. 19380.

Contact Kristin E. Holmes at 215-854-2791 or kholmes@phllynews.com