Dorothy Cotton

Dorothy Cotton (born January 5, 1930) was a leader in the 1960s African-American Civil Rights Movement and a member of the inner-circle of one of its main organizations, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As the SCLC's Educational Director, she was arguably the highest ranked female member of the organization.

Dorothy Foreman Cotton was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina in 1930 as Dorothy Lee Forman at the beginning of the Great Depression. Her mother died when she was three years old, leaving her and her three sisters to be raised by their father, Claude Foreman, a tobacco factory worker with only a third grade education. Life was a daily struggle in their southern segregated rural town.

When Foreman was in high school she met Rosa Gray, an English teacher that positively changed her life and encouraged her to be successful and strong. Gray, being the director of the annual school play, often gave Foreman the lead in the school play, which she said made her feel "such a connection to her". Gray helped secure a place for Foreman at Shaw University where she studied English as well as secured her two part-time jobs for her on campus, one in the school cafeteria and the other cleaning the teacher's dormitory. When Dr. Daniel, a teacher at Shaw was offered the Presidency job at Virginia State University, Foreman went along and worked as his housekeeper. Whilst working for Daniel, Foreman described her job in the residence as "part daughter, part housekeeper" While she was at Virginia State, she met a man by the name of Horace Sims, a student that was in a Shakespearean class with her, who introduced her to George Cotton. Cotton was not a student at Virginia State. She began dating Cotton and he later proposed to Cotton after asking Daniel for his blessing. She married George Cotton in the President’s home just after graduating. She then pursued and earned a master's degree in Speech Therapy from Boston University in 1960. It was in Petersburg that Foreman (now Cotton), got involved in a local church led by Wyatt T. Walker. It was here that her Civil Rights activism would begin.

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