THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Edith N. Finlayson

February 28, 1925 – September 19, 2001

“For students, and certainly what they feel, what they’re getting out of it, what they bring to it, is very, very important.” – Edith Finlayson, newly appointed to the board of University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. July, 1980.

One of the original 28 women who founded the National Organization for Women, June 1966. First African-American Nurse at the Veterans Hospital near Milwaukee and champion of social justice. Served on the Wisconsin Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women. Active in Milwaukee civic affairs. Member of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, appointed by former governor Lee Sherman Dreyfus, 1980–1987; chaired the board’s education committee; and helped establish the Leon Sullivan Distinguished Professorship at the university. Founder of the E.B. Phillips Day Care Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.