NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Sybil Haydel Morial, civil rights activist, widow of New Orleans’ first black mayor, Ernest “Dutch” Morial, and mother of former Mayor Marc Morial, has died at age 91.

Her family announced her death Wednesday in a statement issued by the National Urban League, whose president and CEO is Marc Morial. Details about the time and cause of death were not disclosed.

“She faced the harsh reality of Jim Crow laws with unwavering courage and faith, which she imparted not only to her own children but to everyone she came into contact with,” the statement said.

Born on November 26, 1932, Morial grew up in New Orleans, where her father was a doctor and her mother a teacher. She later met the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in Boston and returned home to contribute to the civil rights movement.

In her 2015 memoir, Witness to Change: From Jim Crow to Empowerment, Morial described how she and her friends, including future Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, were chased out of New Orleans City Park by a police officer because of the color of their skin.

She attended Xavier University, one of the city’s historically black colleges, before transferring to Boston University, where King pursued a degree in theology and appeared as a guest preacher in churches.

Later, on the way home, she and other black passengers had to transfer to the baggage car as the train crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.

“The barricade that prevented us from accessing schools, workplaces, restaurants, hotels and even toilets would have to be torn down brick by brick, law by law,” she wrote.

She was in Boston in 1954, the year the Supreme Court made a landmark decision that ended racial segregation in schools.

“Those of us from the South … We wanted to come home because we wanted to be part of the change. We knew change was coming,” she said in a 2018 interview with Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

That summer, she tried to enroll at New Orleans’ other top universities – Tulane and Loyola. She enrolled at both for the summer semester and attended classes at Tulane for nearly a week while waiting for her transcript from Boston. Eventually, however, she was told she could not enroll because of her race.

At Loyola, she was told that “state law does not allow blacks to attend the same school as whites.”

When she returned home in 1954, she also met the man she would marry: Ernest Nathan “Dutch” Morial. During a summer book club, the two had an intense discussion about the recent court decision to end racial segregation.

They married the following year, and she supported her husband by raising five children and working as a teacher while he ran for state legislature in 1968 and for mayor in 1978.

She was often the one who had to protect her children from the resulting racist threats and was the first to run to the phone to answer the call.

During Morial’s first term as mayor, National Guard troops were stationed at her home to protect the family during the 1979 police strike that led to the cancellation of Mardi Gras parades.

Sybil Morial also became an influential figure in the city.

She founded the Louisiana League of Good Government, which helped black people register to vote when they still had to pass tests such as memorizing the preamble to the Constitution. According to the LSU Women’s Center, she was also a plaintiff in a lawsuit against a Louisiana law that prohibited public school teachers from participating in anti-segregation groups.

She held various administrative positions at Xavier for 28 years and served on numerous boards and advisory committees throughout the city.

“Few women have played such an outsized role in New Orleans’ recent history,” former Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a social media post. Current Mayor LaToya Cantrell called Morial “a jewel and trailblazer of New Orleans” and said the city’s flag would fly at half-staff in her honor.

At the 1984 New Orleans World’s Fair, she championed the construction of a pavilion dedicated to the contributions and experiences of African Americans in American history, and in 1987 she served as executive producer of “A House Divided,” a documentary film about the desegregation of New Orleans.

After her husband died unexpectedly in 1989 at the age of 60, Morial said she briefly considered running for mayor in 1994. Instead, her then 35-year-old son Marc ran and won, thus establishing a second generation of Morial mayors.

Funeral plans have not been announced. Sybil Morial leaves behind five children, seven grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

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Associated Press writer Kevin McGill contributed to this story.