CREEDE HINSHAW: Can anything good come out of Lumpkin?

Dorothy Pitman Hughes was born in 1938. She died Dec. 1. She is described as a pioneering feminist and activist, labels guaranteed to produce loathing and disgust in parts of American society and admiration and pride in others. I fall into the second group.

I had not heard about Ms. Hughes, although I must have seen the iconic 1971 photograph of her, full afro, large hoop earrings, standing tall and proud next to the equally notorious white feminist Gloria Steinem, both women’s arms extended in the black power salute. The raised arms, the clenched fists, the disdain and determination on the faces of these purposeful young adult women … there is peril or promise in this photograph, or maybe both.

Dorothy Jean Ridley Hughes was born and raised in tiny Lumpkin, Georgia. How did she get from such a rural locale to such a place of prominence? Lumpkin is remote, 60 miles or so from Albany and perhaps the same distance from Columbus. Today even the most isolated American places have internet access. Not so in the mid-20th century. Lumpkin, the county seat of Stewart County, would have been isolated and segregated when Dorothy was born. When, at age 19 in 1956, she left Lumpkin, its population was around 1,300. She moved to New York City with 7,782,000 citizens.

That’s hardly the path most folks in Stewart County were taking. A move to Albany or Columbus would have been colossal; a move to Atlanta even larger. But New York City? This would have taken a great deal of courage.

One article (Essence website, Dec. 11, written by Brooklyn White) reports that when Dorothy was 10 years old, her father was severely beaten and left on the family’s doorstep. The family believed this dastardly brutality was of the KKK, and Dorothy, who prayed for her father’s healing, resolved to make the world a better place to live.

She began making good on that vow not long after arriving in New York City, where she founded the first inter-racial children’s cooperative in the city. Later she founded New York City’s first battered women’s shelter. Before long, she had attracted the attention of Gloria Steinem. She was involved in economic empowerment zones in Harlem, the Congress on Racial Equality and Malcolm X’s Organization of African American Unity.

I looked for clues about Hughes’ faith journey. Other than a report about her prayer upon the traumatic event of her father’s beating and her later association with Malcom X’s organization, I found nothing. I was hoping to find that she was raised in a small Baptist or Methodist church in Stewart County, nurtured in faith by parents or grandparents. Maybe she was. Maybe she attended Sunday school and sang in a church choir; I found no such record.

Can anything good come out of Lumpkin, Georgia? Even if she had little formal faith training, I’m convinced God raised this courageous Stewart County prophet and activist for the good of God’s people. I am grateful for the courageous activism of Dorothy Jean Ridley Pitman Hughes and Stewart County, from whence she came.