Resolution would make July 1 Lucile Bluford Day in Missouri

July 1 would be named Lucile Bluford Day in Missouri under a resolution heard Wednesday by the Missouri House Trade and Tourism Committee.

Bluford, a journalist who died in 2003, mounted a legal challenge that helped integrate the University of Missouri. She spent seven decades as a reporter, editor and publisher at The Call newspaper in Kansas City. July 1 was her birthday in 1911.

“Lucile Bluford spent her long life fighting injustice in its many forms and was a strong and influential voice for Kansas City’s African-American community,” sponsor Gail McCann Beatty said in a statement announcing the resolution.