'An incredibly powerful and adventuresome woman': Beloved educator Joan Means Khabele, 78, has died

Austin News Briefs - Austin American Statesman

Joan Elizabeth Means Khabele [kah-BELL], instrumental in the integration of Barton Springs Pool and Austin High School, among a lifetime of other civic achievements, died in Austin of leukemia just after midnight on Monday morning. She was 78. One of five children, Joan Khabele was the daughter of Austin educator and civil rights activist Bertha Sadler Means and mathematics professor and businessman James Means. Her maternal great-grandfather, the Reverend James Sadler, founded the freedom colony of Valley Mills in Bosque [BOSK] County after emancipation. During the 1940s, her parents, who helped found St. James' Episcopal Church, one of the city's first integrated congregations, served on the front lines of protests against segregation throughout the postwar period.