Geraldine Roberts was an American domestic worker, grassroots organizer, and activist from Cleveland, Ohio.
17 Facts About Geraldine Roberts
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Geraldine Roberts founded the first documented domestic workers' rights organization in the post-war US, Domestic Workers of America.
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Geraldine Roberts was born in 1924 in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, to an African-American mother and a father who was African-American and Native American.
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Geraldine Roberts dreamed of getting an education but Ola did not offer many educational opportunities for Black children.
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The town had a segregated one-room schoolhouse for Black children, but the local government stopped funding the town's Black school, and Geraldine Roberts often had to leave school to help her grandmother work.
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At the age of twelve, Geraldine Roberts ran away from her home in order to get more schooling.
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Geraldine Roberts ended up working in a kitchen, cooking for a traveling minstrel show.
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Louis Stokes 8.
Geraldine Roberts participated in school desegregation protests in Cleveland and followed the work of local activists Ruth Turner and Lewis G Robinson.
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In 1965, when Geraldine Roberts was working for a particularly hostile employer who monitored employees while they worked and prohibited the employees from speaking to each other at any point during the day, Geraldine Roberts made a commitment to advocate for better working conditions for herself and colleagues.
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Geraldine Roberts's coworkers encouraged her to form a union and each gave her a dollar to begin one.
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Legal Aid of Cleveland, CORE, and other community volunteers helped DWA form a charter and a board; Geraldine Roberts was elected as president of the organization.
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Geraldine Roberts married James Geraldine Roberts, 22 years her senior, at the age of fourteen.
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Geraldine Roberts reportedly threatened to turn her in to the police for running away from home unless she married him.
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Geraldine Roberts promised to help her get more education, and although he initially helped her enroll in night school in Cleveland, he eventually said that he could not watch the children and demanded she stop her schooling.
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Geraldine Roberts was friends with Louise Stokes, the mother of Carl and Louis Stokes, as they were both domestic workers.
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Geraldine Roberts died in her apartment in the Carver Park Apartment Housing Complex on December 4,1997 at the age of 73.
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Geraldine Roberts received awards from Top Ladies of Distinction Inc.