Dorothy Cotton: Difference between revisions

{{Short description|American civil rights activist (1930–2018)}}

| death_date = {{death date and age |2018|06|10 |1930|06|09|mf=yes}}

| known_for = [[Civil Rights Movement]]

'''Dorothy Cotton''' (JanuaryJune 59, 1930 – June 10, 2018) was an American [[civil rights activist]], who was a leader in the [[Civil Rights Movement]] in the United States<ref name="SeegerReiser1989">{{cite book|last1=Seeger|first1=Pete|last2=Reiser|first2=Bob|title=Everybody says freedom|url=https://archive.org/details/everybodysaysfre00seeg|url-access=registration|access-date=2 August 2, 2011|year=1989|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|isbn=978-0-393-30604-0|pages=[https://archive.org/details/everybodysaysfre00seeg/page/119 119]–}}</ref> and a member of the inner- circle of one of its main organizations, the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]] (SCLC). As the SCLC's Educational Director, she was arguably the highest -ranked female member of the organization.

== Early life and education ==

Dorothy Foreman Cotton was born in [[Goldsboro, North Carolina]], on June 9, 1930, as Dorothy Lee Foreman.<ref name="NYT1">{{cite news |last1=Sandomir |first1=Richard |title=Dorothy Cotton, Rights Champion and Close Aide to King, Dies at 88 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/obituaries/dorothy-cotton-rights-champion-and-close-aide-to-king-dies-at-88.html |access-date=7 December 7, 2019 |work=The New York Times |date=14 June 14, 2018}}</ref> Her mother, Maggie Pelham Foreman, died when she was 3 years old.<ref name="NYT1" /> That left her and her three sisters to be raised by their father, Claude Foreman, a tobacco factory and steel mill worker,<ref name="NYT1" /> with only a third-grade education.<ref name="dorothycotton.com">{{cite web|url=http://www.dorothycotton.com|title=Operations Automation Default Page|website=www.dorothycotton.com}}</ref> Life was a daily struggle in their southern segregated rural town.<ref name="oral">Oral Histories, Civil Rights History Project: Dorothy Cotton, Civil Rights Activist, UNC Chapel Hill, 7/July 25/, 2011.</ref> Cotton's father would frequently beat Cotton and her three sisters.<ref name="NYT1" /> Cotton said, "I recall nothing nurturing in my home environment”environment".<ref name="NYT1" />

When Cotton was in high school, she met Rosa Gray, an English teacher who positively changed her life and encouraged her to be successful and strong. Gray, being the director of the annual school play, often cast her in the lead, which Foreman said made her feel "such a connection to her".<ref name="loc">{{Cite web|url = https://www.loc.gov/item/afc2010039_crhp0040/|title = Dorothy Foreman Cotton Oral History Interview|date = July 11, 2011|access-date = November 15, 2015|website = Library of Congress|publisher = Congress.gov|last = Mosnier|first = Joseph}}</ref> Gray helped secure a place for Cotton at [[Shaw University]], where she studied English, as well as securing two part-time jobs for her on campus, one in the school cafeteria and the other cleaning the teacher's dormitory. When Dr. Daniel, a teacher at Shaw, was offered the Presidency jobpresidency at [[Virginia State University]], Cotton went along and worked as his housekeeper. Cotton described her job inat the residence as "part daughter, part housekeeper"<ref name="loc" /> While at Virginia State, she met a man by the name of Horace Sims, a student in a [[Shakespeare]]an class with her, who introduced her to George Cotton. George Cotton was not a student at Virginia State. Dorothy married George in thePresident President’sDaniel's home just after graduating. She then pursued and earned a master's degree in Speech Therapy from [[Boston University]] in 1960. It was in [[Petersburg, Virginia|Petersburg]] that Cotton, got involved in a local church led by [[Wyatt T. Walker]]. It was here that her Civil Rights activism would begin.

== Civil rights activism ==

In an interview done by the [[Library of Congress]],<ref name="loc" /> Cotton recounts an instance when she was outside and a white boy rode his bike by and sang, "deep down in the heart of niggertown."<ref name="loc" /> She recounts the experience and says that this made her angry, and she never forgot it, having given her "a consciousness about the wrongness of the system"<ref name="loc" /> This would set up her mentality as she began her journey working with the Civil Rights Movement.

Whilst she was attending Virginia State University, she got involved with a local church led by Wyatt T. Walker, the regional head for the [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]]. She says that she felt drawn to the church because of its involvement in the movement.<ref name="loc" /> Walker asked Cotton if she would be willing to help organizingorganize and trainingtrain children for picketing campaigns. Her job was to teach them how to correctly picket and march for the movement. "She helped Walker protest segregation at the library and at the lunch counter, and she taught direct-action tactics to students."<ref>{{Cite book|title = The Civil Rights Revolution: Events and Leaders, 1955–1968|last = Sargent|first = Frederic|publisher = McFarland|year = 2004|isbn = 978-0-7864-1914-2|location = Jefferson, NC|pages = 139–140}}</ref> Not long after she got involved, [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] was invited to the church to speak. The program for the evening included both King and Cotton. Cotton read a piece of poetry, and King took an interest and later had a conversation with Cotton. While in [[Petersburg, Virginia|Petersburg]], King asked Walker if he would move to [[Atlanta]] to help King form the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]]. Walker said that he would only go if he could bring two of his closest associates. Those two associates were Jim Wood and Dorothy Cotton. Cotton made the decision to go but to stay for only three months. She ended up staying for 23 years. In those years, she made immense contributions to the Civil Rights Movement.<ref name="dorothycotton.com" /> When Cotton first arrived in [[Atlanta]], she was Walker's Administrative Assistant. Not long after, King recruited her to help out at [[Highlander Research and Education Center|Highlander Folk School]], a school that was receiving much bad publicity. At Highlander, Cotton met [[Septima Poinsette Clark|Septima Clark]], with whom she would work on the Citizenship Education Program.

=== Citizenship Education Program ===

|quote = I realize that people, en masse, saw the civil rights movement just as a bunch of marches. And I know from first hand that, that's not true. We had a major training program called Citizenship Education Program. The reason for doing this citizenship training was to help African-American folk, who were living at a time when we had what I call American style [[apartheid]].

Cotton’sCotton's close work with [[Septima Poinsette Clark|Septima Clark]] and [[Esau Jenkins]], via both the [[Highlander Research and Education Center|Highlander Folk School]] in Tennessee and the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]], created a grassroots movement in rural southern areas during the violent and tense Civil Rights Era of the 1960s. [[Esau Jenkins]] was an early participant in the formation of the Program. As an independent businessman with "a third grade education but a PhD mind", Jenkins drove a private bus to the mainland from the coastal Islands of South Carolina, taking island locals to and from their day jobs.<ref name="oral" />

The Citizenship Education Program predominately focused predominantly on teaching voter registration requirements as well as community and individual empowerment. Most Southern states had created voting registration laws designed around literacy exercises specifically to disqualify potential African-American voters. Such requirementsRequirements to register to vote included having the ability to recite random parts of the constitutionConstitution as well as signing one's name in cursive writing. Many of those imposing these prerequisites on blacks were themselves illiterate, rendering the process unreliable and subjective; many blacks were turned away. The program sought to reinforce in them an awareness that their voting rightrights waswere inviolable. The program also taught about dealing with basic everyday needs, as well. Another hope for the program was to create a wave of education that would spread throughout the local communities, with the community members themselves as the teachers.<ref>{{cite thesis|type=Ph.D.|last=Gillespie|first=Deanna M.|date=2008|title='They Walk, Talk, and Act Like New People': Black Women and the Citizenship Education Program, 1957–1970|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OMgfM2zk20EC&pg=PA48|publisher=Binghamton University|location=Binghamton, New York|isbn=978-0-549-57761-4|via=ProQuest}}{{Dead link|date=February 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

The hope for the education program was that it would spread to other communities and that these programs and schools would be set up in other communities throughout the south and, ultimately, the entire United States. In a brochure for the program the goal is clearly stated: "Their immediate program is teaching reading and writing. They help students to pass literacy tests for voting."<ref>{{Cite web|title = Citizen Education Program {{!}} Tulane University Digital Library|url = http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%253A21245|website = digitallibrary.tulane.edu|access-date = 2015-11-November 15, 2015}}</ref> These programs also providedcovered the cost of tuition, training, and even the cost of travelling to the training center itself. With its commitment the Citizenship Education Program would help many blacks register over the next few years. The Citizenship Education Program had a profound impact on the movement with well over 6,000 men and women participating in workshops and classes.<ref name="oral" />

Cotton helped [[James Bevel]] organize the students during the [[Birmingham campaign]] and its [[Children's Crusade (1963)|Children's Crusade]], and conducted citizenship classes throughout the South during the era. She also accompanied [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]], the co-founder and first president of the SCLC, on his trip to [[Oslo]], [[Norway]] to receive the 1964 [[Nobel Peace Prize]].<ref>{{cite news|last1=Arora|first1=Kanika|title=Fighting for civil rights 'made us stronger,' says King assistant Dorothy Cotton in campus speech|url=http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2007/02/fighting-civil-rights-made-us-stronger-says-dorothy-cotton|access-date=February 8, 2017|newspaper=Cornell Chronicle|date=February 21, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170208010348/http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2007/02/fighting-civil-rights-made-us-stronger-says-dorothy-cotton|archive-date=February 8, 2017|location=Ithaca, New York|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The [[Ithaca, New York]]-based musical group, the Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers sings in Cotton's honor. She was a gifted singer, and often led Negro spirituals at rallies and in classes. The group seeks to "preserve the uniquely American art form of the formal concert style "'Negro Spiritual.'"<ref>{{Cite web|title = Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers|url = https://dorothycottonjubileesingers.wordpress.com/|website = Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers|access-date = 2015-11-November 15, 2015|language = en-US|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20141108174232/http://dorothycottonjubileesingers.wordpress.com/|archive-date = 2014-11-08|url-status = dead}}</ref>

== Death ==

Dorothy Cotton died on June 10, 2018, ata theday ageafter ofher 8888th birthday.<ref>{{cite newsweb | url=https://www.ithacajournal.com/story/news/local/2018/06/11/dorothy-cotton-civil-rights-leader-dies-ithaca/689890002/ | title=Civil-rights icon Dorothy Cotton, 88, remembered as 'regal giant of social justice'|work=The Ithaca Journal|first=Matt|last=Steecker|date=June 11, 2018|access-date=December 31, 2023}}</ref>

== See also ==

== References ==

[[Category:American civilnonviolence rights activistsadvocates]]

[[Category:NonviolenceAfrican-American advocatesactivists]]