Nathel Burtley became deputy superintendent of Flint Community Schools in 1981 Rachel DeSantis is a senior writer on the music team at PEOPLE. She has been working at PEOPLE since 2019, and her ...

The sign outside the pool read, “Private: Whites Only,” but unafraid to make trouble, young Nathel Burtley and his friends jumped in anyway. The remarkable act of defiance by a group of black ...

COVID-19 has taken the lives of more than 63,000 people in America. One of them was Nathel Burtley. Burtley was the first African American to lead Flint Community Schools in Michigan in the late ...