Kathy Baxter has spent her life as an educator. The daughter of the Unitarian minister, she went on to become an elementary school teacher. Finding that the textbooks she was using were only about white people, she began to look for teaching materials that portrayed a more honest view of American life.
Strongly believing that these materials were better for all children, whatever their color or background, she eventually left the classroom in order to write programs of her own. Her memoir, In the Shadow of the Hanging Tree, tells that story alongside more of her journey navigating race and privilege.
Miss Baxter is a member of the Unitarian universalist a Mount Airy in central Philadelphia.