Doris Vivian Wilson, a Hill District native and Young Women's Christian Association executive who took part in a 1960s civil rights push in Mississippi, died Sunday of a stroke at Life Care Hospital in Wilkinsburg. She was 87.

Ms. Wilson was a graduate of Schenley High School. In 1942, she received an undergraduate degree in education, as did her father before her, from what is now Tuskegee University. She later earned two master's degrees -- one in religious education from Columbia University and another, in social work, from Case Western Reserve University.

Working for the National and Metropolitan Chicago YWCAs, she pushed to secure public support for quality day care. An Episcopalian throughout her life, Ms. Wilson did volunteer work and was active in the church.

Two of the causes she was involved in for her entire life were women's rights and civil rights. From 1963 to 1965, she was one of approximately 100 women who took part in a program called "Wednesdays in Mississippi."

The program worked toward ending legal segregation, bringing together black and white women from Northern cities with black and white women in Mississippi. Dubbed "Wednesdays women," many participants would fly on Tuesdays to Mississippi and return home on Thursdays, keeping a low profile given the turbulent climate at the time.

"It's very difficult for people today to understand how tense the summer of '64 was," Ms. Wilson said in a 2001 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, after she and other participants were honored by the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. "We really just didn't know what would happen."

Little publicized at the time, the program was later credited by civil rights activists with furthering the state's desegregation movement by supporting besieged civil rights activists in the South. It transformed some of the Northern women into lifelong advocates of civil rights, said Marian Wright Edelman, Children's Defense Fund founder and president.

In 1964, Ms. Wilson was teamed with 22-year-old Susan Goodwillie, a 1963 graduate of Stanford University. The two women were sent to Jackson to coordinate the Wednesdays in Mississippi project in that city.

Troubled by racial inequities, "I wanted to be part of the solution, but initially no one" in the civil rights movement "would hire a white girl," said the woman who is now Susan Goodwillie Stedman of Westport, Maine. "I became the first white woman to be employed by the National Council of Negro Women" which was one of the groups involved in the Mississippi project.

"Doris and I could not live together in Jackson," Mrs. Stedman recalled. "Finding a place where a white woman and a black woman could meet was a problem in Mississippi. I had to sneak into a black YWCA. Doris was a wonderful friend and co-worker. She was a guiding, steady hand in the midst of chaos."

Friends and family also knew Ms. Wilson as a woman of "incredible strength and courage," said her sister-in-law, Margaret Dorothy Wilson of Arlington, Va. "She was extremely spirited and never bored. She traveled extensively and was always busy. She loved to cook and knit. At one point she made sweaters for everybody."

For more than 20 years Ms. Wilson swam three or four days per week at the Downtown YWCA, until the pool there was closed in 2005, Mrs. Wilson said.

Ms. Wilson, who never married, retired in 1977 as executive director of the Chicago Metropolitan YWCA. In 1983, she moved back to Pittsburgh and lived in Shadyside until shortly before her death.

She is survived by a brother, Leon Wilson, of Arlington, Va.

A celebration of her life will be held at Calvary Episcopal Church, 315 Shady Ave., Shadyside, on a date to be announced later.