Aileen Hernandez | |
---|---|
Born |
Aileen Clarke Hernandez May 23, 1926 Brooklyn, New York |
Died | February 13, 2017 Tustin, California |
(aged 90)
Alma mater | New York University, California State University, Los Angeles |
Occupation | Woman's rights activist, union organizer, president of the National Organization for Women (1970–1971) |
Aileen Clarke Hernandez (May 23, 1926 – February 13, 2017) was an African-American union organizer, civil rights activist, and women's rights activist who served as the president of the National Organization for Women between 1970 and 1971.
Hernandez was born Aileen Blanche Clarke on May 23, 1926, in Brooklyn, New York, to Jamaican American immigrants Charles Henry Clarke, Sr. and Ethel Louise Hall. As the only African-American family on their block, they were subjected to racial discrimination from their neighbors, something she would later point to as a reason for her interest in political activism. Hernandez was educated at Bay Ridge High School in Brooklyn and later received a scholarship to attend Howard University. At Howard, she received a degree in sociology and political science, graduating with magna cum laude honors, and was a member of the college's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Her interest in civil rights had been sustained by an experience she had in Washington, DC, fresh off the train from New York to start at Howard. When she asked a station attendant for a way to the university, she was told to hail a "black" taxi cab. Unaware of prevailing social conventions in the city, she assumed that this referred to the color of the car. However, "this wasn't the issue," she later said in an interview with Makers. "If you wanted to go to Howard University," a traditionally African-American university, "no taxi driver who was white was going to take you."
After Howard, Hernandez began graduate studies at New York University but left for California, on the west coast of the United States upon learning that the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union had an open place in their labor college, which aimed to train new labor leaders.