Gwendolyn Webb

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Gwendolyn Webb

Gwendolyn Cook Webb (born February 15, 1949 in Birmingham) is a civil rights activist, Christian minister, former Birmingham Police officer, and founder of Foot Soldiers International. She was an administrative assistant for Birmingham City Council District 4 representative Gwen Sykes from 2001 to 2005, and president of the Inglenook Neighborhood Association and the East Birmingham Community from 2017 to 2021.

Webb attended Western Olin High School and was one of hundreds of Birmingham students trained by James Bevel who left school to participate in the Children's Crusade in May 1963. She was arrested for demonstrating and held in a temporary jail at the Alabama State Fairgrounds.

Webb graduated from Western Olin in 1967. She married and had a daughter that year. She enrolled at UAB and worked as a hospital technician before joining the Birmingham Police Department in 1975. She was assigned to the department's business services unit investigating financial fraud.

She remarried, to white internal affairs lieutenant Bill Webb in 1979. The department reassigned them both from investigative roles to prison duty in apparent dissatisfaction with their relationship. In 1980 the Webbs were chosen to serve as Mayor Richard Arrington's personal security detail. The image of an interracial couple in that role brought favorable national attention, but struck some in Birmingham, including City Councilor John Katopodis, a frequent Arrington critic, as "tasteless".

After retiring from the department, Webb was ordained as a minister. Her third marriage was to James Appling, with whom she operated Travel Scene Tours. Webb was part of the inaugural class of Leadership Birmingham in 1984. She served on the Jefferson County Judicial Commission from 1984 to 1989.

She founded Sisters Informing Sisters in 2008 and Foot Soldiers International in 2012. Webb has incorporated several organizations, including God's People United For A Better World, Future Multipreneur Of America, Women Of War Ministries and Gwendolyn C. Webb Ministries. She completed a certificate in divinity studies at Samford University in 2021.

Webb was a founding member of the board of the Birmingham Black Radio Museum. She was appointed to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Board of Directors in 2019. As a candidate for Council District 4 in the 2021 Birmingham municipal election she pledged to reopen schools for community education, including civics classes, and to eliminate blight and strengthen neighorhoods.

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