MEREDITH, N.H. (AP) – Neil V. Sullivan, an educator and civil rights advocate who helped integrate schools in Virginia, California and Massachusetts, died Saturday at his home in Meredith of congestive heart failure, a family spokesman said Wednesday.

The Manchester native, son of Irish-immigrant laborers, was 90.

After serving as a communications officer on destroyers in World War II, Sullivan returned to New England in 1946 and served as superintendent of schools in various districts in Maine and Long Island, N.Y., where he established the first nongraded school system in the eastern United States.

In 1963, Sullivan ran a privately funded school for black children in Farmville, Va., after Prince Edward County had closed its public schools in defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs. the Board of Education ruling.

While the Justice Department carried the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Prince Edward County Free Schools operated for more than a year until the Supreme Court ordered the county to provide free public education for all children.

Sullivan then moved Berkeley, Calif., where he became the principal architect of the “Berkeley Plan” that made Berkeley the first city of more than 100,000 to fully integrate its public schools.

During the 1968 presidential campaign, Sullivan was a key adviser to Sen. Robert Kennedy on education.

In 1969, Sullivan returned to New England as the Massachusetts education commissioner during the violent struggle over forced busing to achieve integration in Boston schools in the early 1970s.

Former Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn, then a state representative from South Boston, recalls clashing with Sullivan, but he said the heated exchanges were never personal.

“It was more of a sociological experiment, and Dr. Sullivan thought it was good for the city’s public school system,” Flynn said of forced busing. “Even though I had the highest respect for him, I just couldn’t agree with that position.”

The current Massachusetts education commissioner, David P. Driscoll, said Sullivan showed “great leadership and compassion” during a painful chapter in the state’s history.

“His impact is still felt today, and he will be missed,” Driscoll said in a statement.

An educational innovator, Sullivan created a Youth Advisory Council to schools in Massachusetts, a move that led to a student seat on the state Board of Education. Early in his career, Sullivan introduced the teaching of foreign languages at the primary school level.

In 1972, Sullivan returned to California as chairman of the education department at Long Beach State University, retiring in 1984. He returned to New Hampshire in 1997 after his wife’s death.

Sullivan graduated from what is now Keene State College and Fitchburg State College and held a master’s degree from Columbia University and a doctorate from Harvard. He is survived by sons Roger Sullivan of Marblehead, Mass., and Michael Sullivan of Moultonborough, and by grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The funeral was private.