Dorothy Pitman Hughes

Dorothy Pitman Hughes was born 1938 in Lumpkin, Georgia. When Dorothy 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. Hughes decided as a child in reaction to her family's experiences she would devote her life to improving the circumstances of people through activism.[2]

Pitman Hughes co-founded Ms. Magazine

Pitman Hughes moved from Georgia to New York City in 1957. 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.[3]

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 which would be profiled by New York Magazine columnist, Gloria Steinem. Pitman Hughes and Steinem became friends, and when Steinem began her public speaking career on behalf of feminism, she asked Pitman Hughes to join her. They went on to co-found Ms. Magazine in 1971 with other feminist writers and activists.[3]

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".[2] 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.[4][2]

Hughes and Steinem are pictured together in an iconic black and white photograph, now part of the National Portrait Gallery collection, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Taken by photographer Dan Wynn for Esquire Magazine and published in October 1971, Wynn captured Steinem and Hughes signaling their feminist solidarity by raising their fists in the raised-fist salute first popularized by members of the Black Power movement.[1] Hughes noted the unlikely nature of their friendship at the time, admitting the terror she felt of being seen in public with a white woman in her hometown of Lumpkin, Georgia when Steinem would visit.[5] Ms. Pitman Hughes commissioned photographer Dan Bagan to create an homage portrait of the two friends together again in a similar pose for Ms. Steinem's 80th birthday.

In 1972, Pitman Hughes was a signer of the Ms. campaign "We Have Had Abortions" which called for an end to "archaic laws" limiting reproductive freedom, they encouraged women to share their stories and take action.[6]

Pitman Hughes has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University, taught a course called "The Dynamics of Change" at the College of New Rochelle, and a guest lecturer at City College, Manhattan.[7]

In 1992, 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.[8]

In 1997 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, 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.[9][7]

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. Hughes was part of the research team that created the Business Resource and Investment Service Center (BRISC), focused on the development of small, locally owned businesses in Harlem. However Hughes later became a critic. 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 Hughes, believing BRISC's resources were being unevenly distributed among small businesses in Harlem.[10] 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.[11]

Pitman Hughes and Steinem spoke again in 2008 at Eckerd College where they reenacted their raised fist pose together.[12][13] Steinem has partnered in Hughes' efforts in the Northside community of Jacksonville, Florida to combat hunger with community gardens, by appearing as a speaker and funding support.[13]

Hughes founded Gateway Bookstore in Jacksonville, Florida. She also works in the Northside community of Jacksonville with the Episcopal Children’s Services to combat poverty by creating community food gardens, with support from friend and co-activist Gloria Steinem.[8]

Hughes is the mother of three daughters, and is the aunt of actress Gabourey Sidibe.[14][3]

Oprah Winfrey honored Hughes as one of America’s "Great Moms".[4]

Janelle Monaé portrayed Pitman Hughes in the 2020 film The Glorias.[15]

• Life Is About Choices, Not Excuses: The Life of Ruther Youmans Tyson (2014) Jacksonville, Fla.: DPH Book Publishing ISBN 978-0985364113 (as editor)[3]
• I'm Just Saying, It looks Like Ethnic Cleansing: The Gentrification of Harlem (2012) Jacksonville, Fla.: DPH Book Publishing. ISBN 9780985364106
• Wake Up and Smell the Dollars! Whose Inner-City Is this Anyway!: One Woman's Struggle Against Sexism, Classism, Racism, Gentrification, and the Empowerment Zone (2000) Phoenix, AZ: Amber Books. ISBN 9780965506472

• Interview with Dorothy Pitman Hughes for WNED Public Television series "Woman", 1973
• Dorothy Pitman Hughes papers at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special Collections