Marilyn Virginia Yarbrough

Ms. Yarbrough died Tuesday, March 9, 2004.

She was born Aug. 31, 1945, in Bowling Green, Ky., the daughter of William Ottoway Yarbrough and Merca Lee Hardin. She was raised in Raleigh and graduated from J.W. Ligon High School in 1962. She earned a bachelor’s degree in 1966 from Virginia State University and a law degree in 1973 from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Ms. Yarbrough had been an engineer for IBM Corp. and the Westinghouse Aerospace and Defense Center before studying law. She was a teaching fellow at Boston College before joining the Kansas University School of Law faculty as an associate professor in 1976. She was named professor in 1981 and served as associate vice chancellor for research and graduate studies at KU from 1983 to 1987. She became the first black woman to be dean of a major Southern university in 1987, when she became dean of the Tennessee Law School, a position she held until 1991. She also was a distinguished law professor at Duke University and the first black woman to serve as president of the Law School Admissions Council, which she did from 1986 to 1988.

After she left Tennessee, became the William J. Maier Jr. Chair of Law at West Virginia University, then returned to North Carolina to become the William Rand Kenan Jr. Visiting Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She became a full-time member of the faculty in 1993 and served as associate provost from 1994 to 1996. She was executive director of the Black Law Journal, a leader in the American Bar Assn.’s section on legal education and a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, NCAA Committee on Infractions and the Board of Trustees at Kenyon College. She worked for many years with the United Way, for which she served on the board in Knoxville, Tenn., and was board president in Lawrence, Kan. She attended Duke Chapel for many years, where she was a member of the council, served on the Altar Guild and was president of the congregation for three years.

Survivors include two daughters, Carmen Ainsworth Brady, Kansas City, Mo., and Carla Ainsworth, Seattle; her stepfather, John Toole, Washington D.C.; a brother, William O. Yarbrough Jr., Durham; a stepsister, Barbara Hubbard, Hyattsville, Md.; and a grandson.