Notable Women Who Died in 2006

By Jone Johnson Lewis, About.com Guide

April 13: Muriel Spark

• Muriel Spark, Woman Writer, Dies at 88
• Muriel Spark

April 15: Louise Smith

Called "the first lady of racing," she was the second woman NASCAR racer and the first woman in the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.

• Louise Smith
• Louise Smith - at NASCAR.com

April 23: Florence Mars

A white Southerner who supported civil rights and took part in civil rights protests, Florence Mars documented her work in 1977 in Witness in Philadelphia: a Mississippi WASP's Account of Civil Rights Murders about the murders of civil rights activists James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1964.

April 25: Jane Jacobs

A feisty woman who transformed urban planning by emphasizing lively cities and the interactions of the people in them, died Tuesday just shy of her 90th birthday. More than just an iconoclastic commentator on city planning and its faults, she also was a keen analyst of economics and how national policies of right and left distorted healthy urban growth, adding to such problems as crime.

• Jane Jacobs Is Dead