Dorothy Pitman Hughes - Women's History Month - 11

 Raising their arms in solidarity for women's rights, ...Gloria Steinem on L, Dorothy Pitman Hughes on R,

Last year, (Dec 1, 2022) Dorothy Pitman Hughes died at 84. She encouraged Steinem to start MS Magazine with others.

Wikipedia offers these details of her life:

She was...born Dorothy Jean Ridley; October 2, 1938... [and is known as]... an American feminist, child-welfare advocate, activist, public speaker, author, and small business owner. Pitman Hughes co-founded the Women’s Action Alliance. Her activism and friendship with Gloria Steinem established racial balance in the nascent feminist movement.

She ...was born in Lumpkin, Georgia, to Lessie W. Ridley and Melton Lee Ridley. When she was ten years old, her father was beaten and left for dead on the family's doorstep; the family believes it to be a crime committed by Ku Klux Klan members. In response to her family's experiences, Ridley decided as a child to devote her life to improving the circumstances of people through activism

Ridley moved from Georgia to New York City in 1957, when she was nineteen.There she and her siblings sang in the group "Roger and the Ridley Sisters." Through the 1960s in New York, she worked as a salesperson, house cleaner, and nightclub singer. She began her activism by raising bail money for civil rights protesters. Ridley married Bill Pitman and they had a child before divorcing. Then Pitman met and married Clarence Hughes.

In the late 1960s, needing care for her own children (by 1970, she had three daughters) Pitman Hughes organized a multiracial cooperative day care center on the West Side, the West 80th Community Childcare Center, which would be profiled by New York magazine columnist Gloria Steinem. Pitman Hughes and Steinem became friends, with Pitman Hughes, who was comfortable on stage, encouraging Steinem to begin speaking in public with her about the Women's Movement. The two of them traveled around the country for two years, sharing the stage. Based on the publicity the duo received, Pitman Hughes encouraged Steinem to found a female-operated media source, Ms. Magazine, with other partners, beginning as a special edition of New York. Although she is widely cited as co-founder, Pitman Hughes had no formal role at the magazine.

Pitman Hughes organized the first shelter for battered women in New York City and co-founded the New York City Agency for Child Development, pioneering child-care and noting that "too many women were being forced to leave their children home alone while they worked to feed their families". Pitman Hughes also co-founded with Gloria Steinem the Women's Action Alliance, a pioneering national information center that specialized in nonsexist, multiracial children's education, in 1971. The two women toured together speaking about race, class and gender throughout the 1970s

Pitman Hughes was a guest lecturer at Columbia University, taught a course called "The Dynamics of Change" at the College of New Rochelle, and was a guest lecturer at City College, Manhattan. In 1992, Pitman Hughes co-founded the Charles Junction Historic Preservation Society in Jacksonville, Florida, using the former Junction homestead to combat poverty through community gardening and food production.

In 1997 Pitman Hughes became the first African-American woman to own an office supply/copy center, Harlem Office Supply, Inc., and to become a member of the Stationers Association of New York (SANY). In May 1997, Pitman Hughes began to offer HOS stock at $1.00 a share to individuals, corporations, partnerships and non-profit organizations focused on African-American children. She wrote about her experiences in Wake Up and Smell the Dollars! (2000), advocating small business ownership to other African Americans as a form of empowerment.

Pitman Hughes was involved in the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ), a federal program instituted by the Clinton administration in 1994 designating $300 million of federal, state, and city money for the economic development of Harlem. Pitman Hughes later became a critic, when a Staples store opened nearby and her business was forced to close. The programs brought large businesses like Old Navy and Disney into Harlem to create jobs but ultimately created more competition for locally owned businesses. "Some are convinced that empowering large corporations to provide low paying jobs for our residents will bring economic empowerment to the community.... [But] without African-American ownership, there is ultimately no local empowerment" stated Pitman Hughes, believing resources were being unevenly distributed among small businesses in Harlem. Pitman Hughes later wrote Just Saying... It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing (The Gentrification of Harlem) providing advice to African American business owners who might want to utilize similar government programs such as the JOBS Act, signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama in 2012.

Pitman Hughes and Steinem spoke again in 2008 at Eckerd College where they reenacted their raised fist pose together. Steinem partnered in Pitman Hughes' efforts in the Northside community of Jacksonville, Florida, to combat hunger with community gardens, by appearing as a speaker and funding support.

Oprah Winfrey honored Pitman Hughes as one of America's "Great Moms"

Janelle Monaé portrayed Pitman Hughes in the 2020 film The Glorias.

On December 1, 2022, Pitman Hughes died at the home of her family in Tampa, Florida, at age 84.