Atlanta mourns Phyllis Lawhorn, a pioneering educator and Collier Heights historian

Community members of Atlanta Public Schools, Clark Atlanta University, and the Collier Heights neighborhood are mourning the death of Phyllis Lawhorn after a house fire.

Firefighters responded to a house fire Tuesday morning in Collier Heights. Fire officials say 99-year-old Lawhorn was wheelchair-bound and did not survive.

Lawhorn taught English for 30 years in Columbia, South Carolina, and in Atlanta before becoming a professor at Clark Atlanta University. 

"I think she can be remembered as a trailblazer. You know, with Civil Rights and civil affairs. You know, she was the first teacher to desegregate on the professional level. The first black teacher to teach at a predominantly white high school," said Michael Bond, an Atlanta City Council Member who remembers meeting Lawhorn as a student at Frederick Douglas High School, where Lawhorn taught.

Lawhorn helped desegregate North Fulton High School in 1968, according to Bond. 

Lawhorn is also known as a mentor to her neighbors in the Collier Heights neighborhood. She even published a book about the neighborhood's history: Atlanta's Collier Heights: Bending with the Wind.

"She was very civically engaged and cared greatly about what was going on in her neighborhood, the city, and the world, so she was a great example of how to live your life and never retreat from the space. Never retreat from the rest of planet Earth," Bond said. 

There are no set plans for a memorial for Lawhorn as of Thursday morning.