Coffin, Gregory Carleton, 1926-2002

Educator and civil rights activist Gregory C. Coffin was born in 1926 in Meriden, Connecticut and raised in Rye, New York. He earned a BA from Harvard University, an Ed.M. from Boston University, and a Ph.D. in educational administration from the University of Connecticut. He married Nancy Stackpole Coffin in 1950. The couple had four children. Coffin taught at Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts for three years before becoming principal of Woodstock Academy in Connecticut. He also served as superintendent in several New England school districts before becoming superintendent of District 65 schools in Evanston, Illinois in 1966 during its desegregation efforts. The same year, he became an English professor at Northeastern University. In 1976, President Ryder appointed him director of Northeastern University's Phase II Desegregation operations, later called the Urban Schools Collaborative Office (URSCO). The Urban Schools Collaborative established programs to implement desegregation and improve the public school system in Boston. Coffin retired in 1983 and died on March 30, 2002.