Background
She was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and died in Sedona, Arizona. Stalvey was born on August 22, 1925 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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Lois Stalvey
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A 1974 Time magazine feature on her writing reported that Stalvey wrote, "a remarkable chronicle of a white family"s confrontation with inner-city schools and a harsh indictment of an educational system that is a disaster for most of its pupils."
Immediately after graduating from high school in the late 1940s Stalvey started her first writing job as a copy writer for the local Gimbels department store in Milwaukee. In the early 1950s she moved to Chicago and started an ad firm called Lois Mark & Associates. In 1965 Stalvey formed the Panel of Philadelphians, which sent teams of four women, including a Catholic, a Jew, an African American, and a WASP, to talk with groups around the city about racial justice.
The teams facilitated 110 programs in 1965.
Stalvey"s first book, The Education of a WASP, was published in 1970. In it she detailed her experience as a Caucasian learning about civil rights as a mother in Omaha in the 1960s.
There she began teaching writing and journalism at the Community College of Philadelphia, and wrote articles for the Philadelphia Inquirer and other newspapers. Stalvey moved to Sedona, Arizona in 1979 to continue writing.
Education of an Ordinary Woman, published in 1982, along with Three to Get Ready: The Education of a White Family in Inner City Schools, published in 1997, focused on her experiences after moving to the integrated West Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia.
Stalvey wrote a bimonthly book review column for the Sedona Red Rock News from 1984 to 2004. Stalvey died in Sedona of emphysema on December 7, 2004. Stalvey is cited extensively in publications addressing racism, multiculturalism, white privilege, white allies and other race-related and education-related pieces.
She is also regularly cited by academics, including Ronald Salz of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who based his 1997 commencement address on her work.
