Pioneering Black feminist Dorothy Pitman Hughes dies at 84

Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a pioneering Black feminist, child welfare advocate and community activist who co-founded Ms. Magazine with Gloria Steinem and appeared with her in one of the most iconic photos of the second-wave feminist movement, has died. She was 84.

Hughes died Dec. 1 in Tampa, Florida, at the home of her daughter and son-in-law, said Maurice Sconiers of the Sconiers Funeral Home in Columbus, Georgia. Her daughter, Delethia Ridley Malmsten, said the cause was old age.

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. Steinem credited Hughes with helping her become comfortable speaking in public.

In one of the most famous images of the era, taken in October 1971, the two raised their right arms in the Black Power salute. The photo is now in the National Portrait Gallery.

Hughes, her work always rooted in community activism, organized the first shelter for battered women in New York City and co-founded the New York City Agency for Child Development to broaden childcare services in the city.

Malmsten told The Associated Press that her mother's biggest contribution was helping entire families through the community center she established on Manhattan's West Side, offering day care, job training and more: “She took families off the street and gave them jobs.”

Laura L. Lovett, whose biography of Hughes, “With Her Fist Raised," came out last year, said in Ms. Magazine that Hughes "defined herself as a feminist, but rooted her feminism in her experience and in more fundamental needs for safety, food, shelter and child care.”

Born Dorothy Jean Ridley on Oct. 2, 1938, in Lumpkin, Georgia, Hughes committed herself to activism at an early age, according to an obituary written by her family.

When she was 10, it said, her father was nearly beaten to death and left on the family’s doorstep. The family believed he was attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, and Hughes decided to dedicate herself to helping others.

She moved to New York City in the late 1950s when she was nearly 20 and worked as a salesperson, nightclub singer and house cleaner. By the 1960s she had become involved in the civil rights movement and other causes, working with Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and others.

In the late 1960s, she set up the West 80th St. Community Childcare Center, where in 1968 she met Steinem, who was then a journalist writing a story for New York Magazine. They became friends, and, from 1969 to 1973, they spoke across the country at college campuses, community centers and other venues on gender and race issues. They co-founded Ms. in 1972, with the first issue featuring Wonder Woman on its cover.

“Dorothy’s style was to call out the racism she saw in the white women’s movement,” Lovett said in Ms. “She frequently took to the stage to articulate the way in which white women’s privilege oppressed Black women but also offered her friendship with Gloria as proof this obstacle could be overcome.”

By the 1980s, Hughes was becoming an entrepreneur. She had moved to Harlem and opened an office supply business, Harlem Office Supply, the rare stationery store at the time that was run by a Black woman.

But she was forced to sell the store when a Staples opened nearby, part of President Bill Clinton’s Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone program.

She would remember some of her experiences in the 2000 book “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.”

Hughes was portrayed in “The Glorias,” the 2020 film about Steinem, by actor Janelle Monaé.

She is survived by three daughters: Malmsten, Patrice Quinn and Angela Hughes.

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AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.