My mother, Jean Finlayson, who has died aged 91, was a journalist, campaigner and intrepid traveller. Although she came from a deeply religious and conservative part of the US, she developed radical views and was committed to social justice and anti-racism throughout her life.
Jean was born in a tiny town called Creal Springs in rural southern Illinois, where the midwest meets the deep south, the daughter of Dolph Holmes, a teacher, and his wife, Ione (nee Hepler). She won a scholarship to the prestigious University of Missouri School of Journalism, and after graduating in 1956 (and marrying in the same year), worked as assistant editor of a US-wide farming magazine. At the time she was living with her husband, William Burger, on a Texas farm so remote that she had to gain a pilot’s licence to fly a plane to get around.
