Biography

Dorothy Cotton was born on June 9, 1930 in Goldsboro, North Carolina, USA. She was married to George Cotton. She died on June 10, 2018 in Ithaca, New York, USA.

She was an important figure in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; she led a program that educated thousands of African Americans on their basic rights of citizenship. Along with Septima Clark and Andrew Young, she led five-day workshops in which African Americans studied the U.S. Constitution and African American history, and learned how to read a voting ballot and organize credit unions.

Later in life, she was vice president for field operations at the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and director of student activities at Cornell.

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.

Has three sisters, Effie Mae, Dazzelle and Anne Margaret.

Parents are: Maggie Pelham Foreman and Claude Foreman.

This was about the roughest city we've had -- 45 straight nights of beatings and intimidation. In church every night we'd see people sitting there with bandages on. Some would sit with shotguns between their legs ...We sang before every night we went out to get up our courage ... After we were attacked we'd come back to the church, and somehow always we'd come back bleeding, and singing. [describing the 1964 protests against segregation in St. Augustine, Florida]