Joan Audrey Morrison McManus was born on October 12, 1937 in Newton, Massachusetts. In her
early years she worked as an ad writer in Boston and Los Angeles. While in Los Angeles she
met Ed McManus, whom she married in 1965. They had one child, Michael McManus. She worked
for the Congress of Racial Equality in Louisiana, and was executive secretary of the ACLU in
New Mexico. The family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1967. Joan joined the staff of the
Council on Urban Life in 1970, where she worked as the criminal justice project coordinator.
Ed and Joan divorced in 1971. In 1979 Joan became the Mid-Town Neighborhood Association's
first paid director, and continued to work there until 1982. Among her accomplishments at
Mid-Town, Joan led the struggle to create the Cream City Community Development Credit Union.
In 1983, Joan was raped, and never fully recovered from the attack. Joan continued to write
and work for social justice in Milwaukee, working as the Criminal Justice program
coordinator for the Greater Milwaukee Conference on Religion and Urban Affairs (later known
as the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee), Wisconsin Committee on Occupational
Safety and Health, and the Benedict Center, which works for criminal justice. There she
served, among other roles, as a member of the Citizens Advisory Council to the Milwaukee
County Criminal Justice System. Joan died of lung cancer on February 20, 2003 at St. Mary's
Hospice in Milwaukee.
