Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a trailblazing Black feminist, child welfare advocate, and activist, has passed away. Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Gloria Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine, developed a potent speaking partnership, and co-starred in one of the most recognizable images of the feminist movement. She was 84.
According to Maurice Sconiers of the Sconiers Funeral Home in Columbus, Georgia, Hughes passed away on December 1 in Tampa, Florida, at the residence of her daughter and son-in-law. The funeral home claimed to be unsure of the cause of death.
Although Hughes was less well-known than Steinem, the two formed an influential alliance when feminism was still perceived as a predominantly white, middle-class movement. Steinem thanked Hughes with assisting her in developing her public speaking confidence.
The two lifted their right arms in the Black Power salute in one of the movement’s most well-known images, which was captured in October 1971.
Hughes, a trailblazing figure in child care, co-founded the New York City Agency for Child Development and arranged the city’s first refuge for battered women.
According to a biography on the Ms. Magazine website, she first encountered Steinem in 1968, when the journalist was working on a piece about Pitman Hughes’ daycare center for New York Magazine. They discussed racial and gender issues on college campuses, at community centers, and other places from 1969 to 1973.
Hughes’s parents stated in an obituary published by the funeral home that she was born Dorothy Jean Ridley on October 2, 1938, in Lumpkin, Georgia.
Where was Dorothy Pitman Hughes from? What about the family members
In Lumpkin, Georgia, Dorothy Pitman Hughes was born in 1938. Dorothy’s father was assaulted and left for dead on the family’s doorstep when she was ten years old; the family believes that Ku Klux Klan members were responsible for the crime.
Pitman Hughes made the decision to dedicate her life to activism as a young kid in response to the struggles her family faced.
Dorothy Pitman Hughes’s children and relatives.
Pitman Hughes, a mother of three daughters and the aunt of actress Gabourey Sidibe, On December 1, 2022, Dorothy softly died away in her family’s Tampa, Florida, residence.
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Dorothy Pitman Hughes’ Early life, and Early Career
Pitman Hughes has given guest lectures at City College in Manhattan, Columbia University, and the College of New Rochelle. He has also instructed a course at the College of New Rochelle called “The Dynamics of Change.”
Pitman Hughes co-founded the Charles Junction Historic Preservation Society in 1992 in Jacksonville, Florida, with the goal of eradicating poverty via food production and community gardening.
She joined the Stationers Association of New York and acquired Harlem Office Supply, Inc. in 1997, making her the first African-American woman to do so (SANY). Hughes started selling HOS stock for $1 per share to people, businesses, partnerships, and non-profits that support the education of African-American children in May 1997. In Wake Up and Smell the Dollars! (2000), she discussed her experiences and urged other African Americans to start small businesses as a means of empowerment.
Pitman Hughes was active in the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ), a federal initiative launched in 1994 by the Clinton administration and allocating $300 million in funding from the federal, state, and local governments for Harlem’s economic growth.
Hughes was a member of the research group that established the Business Resource and Investment Service Center (BRISC), a Harlem-based organization dedicated to the growth of locally owned, small businesses. Pitman Hughes later became into a critic, nevertheless. In an effort to create jobs, the initiatives attracted big corporations like Old Navy and Disney to Harlem, but this eventually increased competition for locally owned-businesses.
In 2008 at Eckerd College, Pitman Hughes and Steinem talked once more while acting out their raised fist gesture. Pitman Hughes’ initiative to use community gardens to fight hunger in Jacksonville, Florida’s Northside neighborhood has Steinem’s backing through speaking engagements and financial contributions.
