"Reginald 'Reg' Weaver died Tuesday. He was president of the Illinois Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, 1981 to 1987.
Weaver, who also spent 30 years as a teacher in the Harvey school system, was the first Black person to be elected president of the IEA. After his tenure at IEA, he went on to become the president of the National Education Association, from 2002 to 2008, and later went on to serve in the leadership of Education International, an organization representing 29 million teachers and education workers in 169 countries.