Barbara Everitt Bryant, the first woman to lead the U.S. Census Bureau, overseeing the 1990 count of every U.S. resident, has died. She was 96. Bryant’s family said in an email that she died of natural causes Thursday evening surrounded by family members. In a blogpost, Robert Santos, the current director of the Census Bureau, described Bryant as “a trailblazer and a champion of quality survey methods.” Bryant was appointed Census Bureau director in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush, ahead of the 1990 head count of every U.S. resident. The once-a-decade count determines how many congressional seats each state gets and the distribution of federal funding.
