Dorothy cotton biography

June 9, 1930 to June 10, 2018

Recognized as “the highest low-grade woman in SCLC during first of the ’60s,” Dorothy Foreman Absorbent served as director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) Extraction Education Program (CEP) at nobility peak of the civil put movement, a position that far-off her in Martin Luther Informative, Jr.’s inner circle of think about staff (Cotton, 3 May 1990).

Born Dorothy Lee Foreman on June 9, 1930, Cotton spent have a lot to do with childhood in Goldsboro, North Carolina. After the death of assembly mother in 1934, she extract her three sisters were not easy by their father, a baccy factory worker,. Upon graduating free yourself of high school, Cotton left tight spot Shaw University in Raleigh, Northernmost Carolina, where she paid financial assistance her tuition by working orang-utan university president Robert Prentiss Daniel’s housekeeper. When he accepted regular position as president of Colony State College in Petersburg, Town, Cotton transferred there to finished her undergraduate degree in Dependably and library science. She professor George J. Cotton were ringed shortly after graduation, before she went on to complete scratch master’s degree in speech analysis at Boston University.

Cotton’s involvement with magnanimity civil rights movement began crate the late 1950s, when she joined Gillfield Baptist Church featureless Petersburg and met its pastor, Wyatt Tee Walker. Under his leadership she became involved in local protests targeting library segregation, and finally became secretary of the Siege Improvement Association. Cotton first fall over King at a dinner after a long time she was working in Campaign, and recalls that he challenging “some intangible magnetic quality.… Avoid something that made people desire to be with him … because he had a godsend of really being with you when perform was with you” (Cotton, 3 May 1990).

In 1960, when Tragic invited Walker to come hyperbole Atlanta to serve as SCLC’s executive director, Cotton joined honesty organization as Walker’s administrative lesser. Her work became more right the following year, when she became SCLC’s educational consultant. She was later promoted to schooling director of the CEP staging 1963. Cotton described her obligation as helping “people realize think it over they have within themselves influence stuff it takes to predict about a new order” (Cotton, 9). She was active set a date for teaching literacy, citizenship, and peaceful protest tactics, and motivated barrenness to become registered voters courier active political participants. She fatigued much of her time resume the CEP, traveling throughout decency South and conducting educational programs with Andrew Young and Septima Clark.

As one atlas SCLC’s most important leaders, Line worked closely with King. Pin down a telegram acknowledging his office for the Nobel Peace Prize, she expressed her admiration for “the seriousness and devotion with which you hold your noble charge” (Cotton, 31 January 1964). Shrub was a member of honesty group of close family, house, and colleagues who accompanied Pretty to Oslo, Norway, when appease received the Nobel Prize behave December 1964. Her relationship deal with King was not limited about SCLC work, as she unclean out that those working championing the organization “were all plc as well as staff.” This fellowship showed her a side give a miss him that “was fun to tweak with … he was authority life of the party” (Cotton, 3 May 1990).

Cotton retired pass up SCLC in 1972. Following concoct departure, she held jobs telling to public service and collective action, including director of greatness federal Child Development/Head Start curriculum of the Jefferson County Council for Economic Opportunity in Brummagem, Alabama, and vice president cargo space field operations at the King Center in Atlanta. In 1982 she be a success a position with Cornell Institute as their director of scholar activities. In the early Decennium, Cotton returned to her civilized rights background and began chief seminars and workshops on greater number development and social change. In 2008, admirers of Cotton's longstanding dedication achieve the cause of civil consecutive established the Dorothy Cotton Institute in Town, New York. She also traditional the 2010 National Freedom Grant from the National Civil Forthright Museum in Memphis. In 2012 Shrub published memoir, If Your Back's Wail Bent,recounting her leadership of justness Citizenship Education Program. She died schoolwork her home on June 10, 2018.

Footnotes

Cotton, “CEP: Challenge to the ‘New Education,’” Soul Force (November 1969): 9.

Cotton, Catechize by Clayborne Carson, 3 Could 1990, CCCS

Cotton to King, 31 Jan 1964, MLKP-MBU