Dorothy F. Cotton

Dorothy Cotton was born Dorothy Lee Foreman in Goldsboro, North Carolina on June 9, 1930. She received a bachelor's degree in English and library science from Virginia State College and a master's degree in speech therapy from Boston University. She worked as secretary for the Rev. Wyatt Tee mostra altro Walker, who headed a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. When Walker became an executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1960, Cotton worked as his administrative assistant. She soon became the director of education for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She helped train children to participate in demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, helped organize the night marches against segregation in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964, and directed citizen education workshops that encouraged African-Americans to register to vote. She also became a confidante of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and traveled with him often to events. Cotton left the Southern Christian Leadership Conference a few years after King was assassinated. She became director of the Head Start program in Jefferson County, Alabama; vice president of field operations for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta; and the Southeast regional director of ACTION, a federal agency for volunteer programs. She was the director of student activities at Cornell University from 1982 until 1991. She also formed a consulting firm. Her book, If Your Back's Not Bent: The Role of the Citizenship Education Program in the Civil Rights Movement, was published in 2012. She died on June 10, 2018 at the age of 88. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno