[1][2][3] In her unprecedented six-year-term as president of the National Education Association, she worked to advocate for students in poorer and lower-achieving schools.
[4] After her father, a construction worker,[5] died when she was four, she and her three sisters were raised in relative poverty by a single mother, Josephine Hatwood Austin, who worked in a factory and as a domestic.
[6] Hatwood attended segregated Lynchburg before transferring to Dunbar High School, where she was a cheerleader and participated in the student government, Future Business Leaders of America, and the National Honor Society.
[8] Upon graduating from high school, her teachers, who had collected money from local businesses, churches, and sororities, presented her with a "scholarship" of $1,500 for college.
Around this time, she married Donald Futrell, a coach and physical education teacher with two children from a previous marriage, and took a leave of absence from teaching.
Futrell was also instrumental in the NEA's collaboration with the American Federation of Teachers, forming the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.