After 55 years of service to the NAACP at the local, regional and national levels, Ina M. Boon passed on Monday, February 27 in a North County nursing home under hospice care, one month after her 90th birthday.
“I’ve lost a dear friend whom I’ve known for more than 50 years,” said attorney Frankie Muse Freeman, who worked with Boon on civil rights litigation. “Our community and the Civil Rights Movement are better off because of Ina Boon’s tenacity and courage.”
After graduating from Sumner High School and attending Oakwood University in Alabama, Boon started in the NAACP with the St. Louis city branch as its first paid branch secretary, soon moving up to local executive secretary. Long before it was common, she secured a live-in caretaker for her children so she could embark on a career in civil rights.
She would go on to coordinate NAACP rallies and conventions, raise thousands of dollars, oversee branches and regional offices, recruit hundreds of volunteers and members, work with the national office on several marches on Washington, spearhead a national life membership department and meet with hundreds of business, political, religious and community leaders to address racism.
“From the backrooms to the boardrooms, Mrs. Ina Boon helped change and shape the civil rights landscape of the Midwest and the nation,” said NAACP chairwoman emeritus Roslyn Brock. “Ina Boon was truly one of the driving forces within the NAACP.”
She worked alongside civil rights icons Roy Wilkins and the Reverend Benjamin Lawson Hooks. During Boon’s tenure with the national NAACP office, she worked for six national executive directors. Hooks promoted her to first regional director of Region IV, reporting directly to the national executive director. She would become the national office’s longest-serving Region IV director. She retired as the national Region IV director in the late 1990s, then later became active in the St. Louis County NAACP, where she served as branch president as a volunteer.
“A civil rights giant has not only fallen in the state of Missouri, but in our country, “said Pastor B.T. Rice of New Horizon Seventh Day Christian Church in North County, where Boon was a member for the past seven years. “Ina blazed trails where wise men have feared to tread, and Region IV and the national NAACP are truly mindful of her achievements.”
When Boon’s Mississippi field secretary counterpart Medgar Evers was shot dead in his driveway in 1963, Boon was stunned. She sent her children to Wisconsin to live with family members and fearlessly marched in the Missouri Bootheel, then helped to turn up the heat on fighting discrimination.
In 1967, black firefighters quit their union and established the Firefighters Institute for Racial Equality (FIRE).
“They laughed at us, and we needed the long arm of the NAACP,” said Sherman George, who was looking to be promoted to captain at the time and would go on to become St. Louis’ first African-American fire chief.
George said Boon “immediately recognized the issues of discrimination and unfairness in the fire department” and strategized with FIRE leaders to devise a two-pronged solution. “The first was pickets and rallies every Sunday with churches supporting us,” George said, “and the next was legal redress through the NAACP.”
NAACP won the legal battle, resulting in a consent decree with the St. Louis Fire Department where 12 whites and 12 blacks (including George) were promoted to captain.
“Mrs. Boon’s coordinating the NAACP’s efforts through determination and unyielding commitment to fair job promotions, I believe, played a pivotal role in our promotions and changes within the fire department,” George said. “Ina knew how to put out racial fires of hate.”
Boon maintained active civic involvement in St. Louis. She chaired the Myrtle Hilliard Davis Comprehensive Health Center board. She served as a president of the Top Ladies of Distinction. She was a long-time member of the St. Louis Black Roundtable. She chaired the trustees of Eastern Star Missionary Baptist Church.
“She was respected by all civil rights leaders and clergy,” said James H. Buford, past president and CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis. “She shared her power and wisdom with us all. When she called a meeting, we all came. She was smart, caring and will be sorely missed.”
Boon had three sons, LaVert, LaVence and Gentry Trotter. She is survived by Gentry Trotter, founder of Heatupstlouis.org; a niece, Alice Marie Boon; nephews, Nelson E. Boon Jr., Garfield Boon Jr., David Boon and Christopher Harris; grandsons, Damon Christopher Trotter, LaVert Simmons and Perry Simmons; seven great- and great-great grandchildren; and several extended family members, including Daisy Berry and Carole Trotter.
The family asks that donations in her honor be made to the NAACP at National Headquarters, 4805 Mount Hope Dr. Baltimore, MD 21215. The family is coordinating a public memorial service within the next 60 days at New Horizon Seventh Day Christian Church in Cool Valley. However, funeral services will be private.
