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Remembering Dorothy Pitman Hughes: Activism through Action
December 28, 2022
I am not a 'kick-down-the-door' kind of person. But I do have a strong sense of justice, I am willing to speak up for myself and others and to take emotional risks.
-Nadiyah Taylor, in Stories of Resistance
-Nadiyah Taylor, in Stories of Resistance
Dorothy Pitman Hughes (1938-2022), American feminist, child-welfare advocate, activist, public speaker, author, and small business owner, passed away in December. Pitman Hughes was a practical activist who, according to her biographer Laura L. Lovett, “rooted her feminism in her experience and in more fundamental needs for safety, food, shelter and child care,” adding, “She realized that child care challenges were deeply entangled with issues of racial discrimination, poverty, drug use, substandard housing, welfare hotels, job training and even the Vietnam War.”
The Washington Post noted, “Ms. Hughes organized one of the first shelters for battered women in New York City and co-founded the New York City Agency for Child Development to broaden child-care services in the city. But she was perhaps best known for her work helping countless families through the community center she established on Manhattan’s West Side, offering day care, job training, advocacy training and more.”
Fellow activist Gloria Steinem recently posted, “From creating the West 80th Community Childcare Center, an innovative and ahead of its time multiracial childcare center, to Harlem’s first bed & breakfast, nothing stopped her…Her devotion to children’s welfare, racial justice and economic liberation means that she left the world in a better place than she found it.”
According to NPR, Pitman Hughes and Steinem “forged a powerful speaking partnership in the early 1970s, touring the country at a time when feminism was seen as predominantly white and middle class, a divide dating back to the origins of the American women's movement.”
View an iconic image of Pitman Hughes and Steinem at the National Portrait Gallery. https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2005.121
The Washington Post noted, “Ms. Hughes organized one of the first shelters for battered women in New York City and co-founded the New York City Agency for Child Development to broaden child-care services in the city. But she was perhaps best known for her work helping countless families through the community center she established on Manhattan’s West Side, offering day care, job training, advocacy training and more.”
Fellow activist Gloria Steinem recently posted, “From creating the West 80th Community Childcare Center, an innovative and ahead of its time multiracial childcare center, to Harlem’s first bed & breakfast, nothing stopped her…Her devotion to children’s welfare, racial justice and economic liberation means that she left the world in a better place than she found it.”
According to NPR, Pitman Hughes and Steinem “forged a powerful speaking partnership in the early 1970s, touring the country at a time when feminism was seen as predominantly white and middle class, a divide dating back to the origins of the American women's movement.”
View an iconic image of Pitman Hughes and Steinem at the National Portrait Gallery. https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2005.121
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