Honorable Dr. Willie B. Kennedy

Served 1981 - 1996

Willie B. Kennedy, was the organizer and founder of The Gamma Phi Delta Foundation, Inc.  She got together with a group of women from across the country, from the membership of Gamma Phi Delta Sorority, Inc.  This Charter group of women worked closely with Dr. Kennedy to provide scholarships for youth within the sorority. 

Additionally, Dr. Kennedy sought out after school programs where the Gamma Phi Delta Foundation would provide tutoring, school supplies and ongoing support as needed.

This Foundation conducted health fairs to assist with educating the community about the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS, and other health problems.

The Foundation has worked closely with the sorority, and is a 501c3 tax exempt entity, organized in 1988, in the City of Detroit, Michigan.

Willie B. Kennedy,  a longtime San Francisco supervisor who championed minority- and women-owned businesses and Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood improvements, died of a heart attack in July of 2013. She was 89.

A Born Leader...

Mrs. Kennedy was born Nov. 5, 1923, in Terrell, Texas. It was a rustic existence. The second of six children, she grew up in a two-bedroom farmhouse with a wood-burning stove and a well for water, her family said. Mrs. Kennedy graduated from high school in Dallas in 1941 and married Paul L. Hooey in Brownwood, Texas, the next year. The couple had a daughter, Paulette M. Hooey, in January 1943, family said. The couple later divorced, and Mrs. Kennedy moved to California with her daughter.

In 1954, she met Joseph G. Kennedy, an attorney in the civil rights movement who would become a Superior Court judge, and they married a year later.

Mrs. Kennedy graduated from City College of San Francisco and later San Francisco State University. Then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein appointed her to the city's Human Rights Commission and the Redevelopment Agency Commission before tapping her in 1981 to fill the seat on the Board of Supervisors left vacant when Supervisor Ella Hill Hutch died.

Mrs. Kennedy became the third African American woman on the board, where she served for 15 years. Among her legislative accomplishments were co-authoring the city's law that set aside a portion of city contracts for women- and minority-owned businesses and legislation that forbade the city from doing business with apartheid-era South Africa. Mrs. Kennedy later served on the BART Board of Directors.