Mrs. Hunter, 97, formerly of Hyde Park, died after a heart attack on Sunday, April 8, in Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, Park Ridge, Illinois. In 1919, when Mrs. Hunter was 10, race riots broke out in Chicago. Her father moved the family to Delavan, Wisconsin, where she was raised. In 1926 she returned to Chicago and enrolled at Hyde Park High School and graduated the next year with honors, just as her mother had done 23 years earlier. She attended the University of Chicago, where she was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and graduated in 1931 with a bachelor's degree in history. Mrs. Hunter later returned to the U. of C. to work toward a master's degree in social work. Looking for experience before writing her thesis, she went to work for the Cook County Department of Welfare in 1936. In 1943 she volunteered for service in England with the American Red Cross so she could do her part in defeating Hitler and the racist and anti-Semitic theories he espoused. During the war she was engaged to Thomas Edward Hunter, whom she had met when they were both undergraduate students at the U. of C. They got married on Feb. 7, 1946, and were together until he died in April 1973. In March 1951, with three children under 5 years old, the Hunters were the first black family to move to the 7300 block of South Prairie Avenue. Before they moved in, people learned they were black, and a mob threatened to burn down the house, but Rev. Phillip A. Johnson, pastor of Salem Lutheran Church, persuaded the mob to disband. On move-in day, Mrs. Hunter's husband, with a rifle beside him, sat in a chair on the lawn of their home while neighbors railed against their arrival. Her husband was working then as an attorney for the city, and Mayor Martin Kennelly arranged for police to protect the house around the clock for the next five months. When the youngest of her children reached 10th grade, Mrs. Hunter became a full-time teacher, eventually becoming chairwoman of the social studies department at South Shore High School. She retired in 1973. "She was a very gracious, very polite kind of gentle woman," her son Adrian said. "I feel very, very fortunate to have had her as a mother. ... I had a mother whom I could love, whom I could like and whom I could respect." In addition to her son, she is survived by another son, Joseph; a daughter, Dorothy Hines; and six grandchildren.

Daughter of Stephen E. Matson and Josephine DeMoss.

Thank you Susan for Sponsoring this Memorial.