Carrie Eugenia Street Bash (6/10/1918 – 3/29/2015) was born in Madisonville, Kentucky. While still quite young, she moved to Indianapolis Indiana with her family, where she spent most of her childhood, graduating from Crispus Attucks High School in 1935. After an undergraduate education at Lane College in Jackson, TN, she returned to Indianapolis and assumed a variety of jobs. Throughout, she was active in civil rights efforts on employment and public accommodations. While attending a conference at Indiana University in Bloomington, she met Harry H. Bash who was studying for his Master’s degree in sociology. They married in New York City in September, 1958, since Indiana was still encumbered with miscegenation laws that were not ruled unconstitutional until 1967 in the case of Loving v. Virginia.

After the wedding, they moved to Philadelphia where Harry had been accepted as a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania and Carrie was hired as a researcher in the Population Research Center. While employed at the University, she sought admission and resumed her studies, completing a B.A. degree with Honors in Sociology in 1962. After graduation, she began graduate studies at Bryn Mawr University, and took a position with the Urban League of Philadelphia, specializing in their Housing program. During this period she also taught a course at Temple University, and co-authored a chapter in a book on Delinquency Prevention (1967). In 1966, when her husband accepted an appointment at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, she transferred to the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis. There she focused on the League’s Housing and Job training programs, during which she innovated a Kinloch revitalization effort and worked with architects and the Kinloch City Council to establish a “sweat-equity” housing development. She also “moon-lighted” as Research Director for a documentary film-maker, Bill Field’s Media Ltd. While living in University City, she served on its Human Relations Commission and co-authored a study of the schools’ SAT testing program. Her Urban League responsibilities expanded toward initiating out-reach programs, making media appearances, seeking funding and writing grant proposals, making annual budge presentations, and assuming related administrative tasks. As organizer of the League’s Annual Dinners, she brought to St. Louis performers and speakers including Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughn, Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Andrew Young, Robert MacNeil and Vernon Jordan. She retired in 1992 as Executive Senior Vice President. She was sought out as a consultant to numerous organizations including the Danforth Foundations, and contributed to designs of local and regional delinquency, educational, employment and housing intervention endeavors. She was also invited as speaker or panelist on local radio, television and at universities such as the University of Missouri – St. Louis, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and St. Louis University.

During retirement, she retained an affiliation with the Urban League Guild, established and contributed funding to the Leslie Scholarship Fund which she created to commemorate her deceased brother Roy Leslie Street. Also, having been appointed to the Board of the St. Louis County Housing Authority, she was eventually elected to a three-year term as Chairperson of its Board. She also served for several years on the Board of Citizens for Missouri’s Children, a child advocacy group. She is survived by her husband Harry H. Bash, her sister Margaret L. Thomas, and several nieces and nephews.