Raylawni Branch Collection

Raylawni Branch was born in 1941 in the Mobile Street area of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The oldest of ten children, she was reared in Hattiesburg, Prentiss, and the Mount Carmel areas of Mississippi, and lived in Chicago, Illinois from age 6 to 14. By the time of her eighth grade graduation, she and her family had moved eleven times and she had attended eight different schools. She and her siblings returned to Hattiesburg after the death of her father, and Raylawni graduated from Rowan High School in 1959. After high school, she married and had three children.

During the Civil Rights Movement, Raylawni participated in several activities, including the March on Washington in 1963. She was involved in the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She integrated the Greyhound and Trailways bus stations in Hattiesburg, and was the first African American ever hired at the Big Yank clothing factory. She also became the first African American ever hired as a switchboard operator at the local telephone company.

In 1965, at age twenty-four, Raylawni was Secretary of the Forrest County, Mississippi NAACP when the organization offered to pay her tuition to the University of Southern Mississippi (USM). On September 6, 1965, she and eighteen-year-old Hattiesburg native Gwendolyn Armstrong became the first African American students at USM. Raylawni majored in Pre-Medicine and had a work-study job on campus in the biology department. Unfortunately, financial strain and personal problems caused her to leave USM after one year.

After separating from her husband in 1966, Raylawni left Mississippi for New York, where she received her nursing degree from St. John's Episcopal School of Nursing. While in New York, she was actively involved in the Vietnam War Movement and was among the protestors that stormed the Pentagon. She received her bachelor's degree in Nursing from the University of Miami in 1969, and joined the Air Force Reserves in 1975, where she has achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Raylawni returned to Hattiesburg in 1987, and enrolled in a Master's program at USM in 1988. She received her Master's Degree in Community Health Nursing, with a minor in Education in 1993. She is presently working as an Instructor of Associate Degree Nursing at Pearl River Community College in Mississippi, and has been married to Alf Branch for 32 years.