Peggy Harper spent decades fighting for neighbors, the underserved, the poor and the community at large. Though she lived in Mechanicsville, her civic involvement touched all pockets of the city.
Civic concern led her to serve in various capacities for numerous boards and organizations. Some highlights: She held various offices in the Mechanicsville Civic Association. She was a neighborhood representative on the city's community empowerment advisory board and the Atlanta Planning and Advisory Board.
She served on the city's license review board and the gentrification task force. And she was a board member for the Atlanta Renewal Community Coordinating Responsible Authority, a nonprofit created to manage federal funding.
Atlanta District 2 City Councilman Kwanza Hall called Mrs. Harper a "tenacious community advocate" who continued to serve even when ill.
"Her failing health in the past few years seemed only to embolden her," he wrote in a prepared statement. "Every breath was precious to Peggy, and she used her voice to speak truth to power right to the end."
On Sept. 7, Margaret "Peggy" Harper of Atlanta died from complications of various illnesses at her home. She was 65. A memorial will be held at a later date.
Mrs. Harper was born in Evanston, Ill., and moved with her family to St. Augustine, Fla., when her father, the late Louis Harper, took a teaching position at the Florida Normal and Industrial Institute, now called Florida Memorial University and located in Miami.
The daughter came by her community activism honestly. Her father had been an advocate for the development of affordable housing and economic opportunity.
In the mid-1970s, after her father died, Mrs. Harper and her mother moved to Atlanta. Elizabeth S. Stewart Smith of Houston, was a Georgia Tech student when she met Mrs. Harper, who at the time was employed in the school's College of Engineering. The activist considered Smith her daughter.
"She was the adult and I was the student," she said. "Peggy was always the one who stood up for the little guy, and she was the voice of a community that had no voice. She was the type person who could see potential in situations and people, and fight to make it a reality."
Mrs. Harper eventually entered Agnes Scott College as a nontraditional student and in 1989 earned a bachelor's degree in economics.
Marlo Patsy Oliver of Atlanta met Mrs. Harper when she was an Agnes Scott student in need of housing. Mrs. Harper offered a room in the three-bedroom home she shared with her mother in southwest Atlanta.
"God clearly sent her to me," Mrs. Oliver said. "I lived with her from 1987 through 1991. Community service was not a project for her. It was her life. Even if she wasn't directly influencing or standing up for a particular neighborhood, she'd stand up for people on the job who didn't speak for themselves. She was the voice of the underdog."
Survivors include her mother, Elsie S. Harper, and a brother, Edwin Harper, both of Indianapolis, Ind.
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