Dorothy Jean Tillman is an American politician, civil rights activist and former Chicago, Illinois alderman.
17 Facts About Dorothy Tillman
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Dorothy Tillman was known for wearing large hats and has cultivated this image as her trademark.
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Dorothy Tillman's parents divorced when she was a child which resulted in her spending her childhood between Montgomery with her father and Pensacola, Florida, where her mother had remarried and relocated to.
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Dorothy Tillman joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as a trainee and field staff organizer in 1963.
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Dorothy Tillman had her first involvement in Chicago politics later in 1965 when King sent her there to campaign for better housing, education and employment conditions for blacks.
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Dorothy Tillman was involved in organizing King's move into a Chicago tenement in early 1966 and the launch of his campaign in July 1966.
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Dorothy Tillman founded the Parent Equalizers of Chicago, which eventually became active in 300 schools across the city, setting the groundwork for school reform in Chicago.
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The momentum created by several successful grassroots campaigns Dorothy Tillman helped organize led to the election of Chicago's first African American mayor, Harold Washington in 1983.
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Dorothy Tillman was appointed by Mayor Harold Washington and later elected as an alderman representing the city's third ward in February 1985, being the first woman elected for that ward.
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Dorothy Tillman pioneered the first TIF to be used in the black community, with the construction of the 55th and Dan Ryan shopping center.
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Amid the Democratic primary of the 1989 Chicago mayoral special election, in which she was supporting Timothy C Evans, Tillman called incumbent mayor Eugene Sawyer an "Uncle Tom".
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In 2000, Dorothy Tillman requested that two waiters at the Palmer House hotel in Chicago be replaced with African-American waiters for a banquet hosted by Alderman Dorothy Tillman.
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Dorothy Tillman was an advocate of reparations for slavery and was successful in having a number of resolutions passed in support of the concept.
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Dorothy Tillman authored a bill, passed unanimously in 2002, forcing companies who perform contracts with the council to declare any past ties with slavery.
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In early 2005, Dorothy Tillman led a campaign against a $500 million refinancing deal with the Bank of America because of its alleged links with slavery.
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Dorothy Tillman has been involved in the Harold Washington Cultural Center since its inception.
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In October 2008 Dorothy Tillman was convicted for criminal trespassing at an Alabama hospital in March 2008.