About Dorothy Sunrise Lorentino
Dorothy Sunrise Lorentino was a Comanche teacher from Oklahoma. As a child, she won a landmark education judgment against the Cache Consolidated School District of Comanche County, Oklahoma for Native American children to attend public schools rather than government-mandated Bureau of Indian Affairs Schools. It was a precursor case to both the Alice Piper v. Pine School District (1924) which allowed Native American children to attend school in California and Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which decided separate schooling based on race was unconstitutional. Language from her judgment was incorporated into the Indian Citizenship Act (1924). Having won the right to attend public school, she went on to earn credentials as a special education teacher and taught for over forty years. In 1997, she was the first Native American and the first Oklahoman to be inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.