Dorothy Cotton

Dorothy Lavinia Foreman was born on the fifth of January 1930 at Goldsboro, in Wayne County, North Carolina, the daughter of Claude Daniel Foreman — a Black-Goldsboro tobacco-factory worker of the principal closing-period Goldsboro-Wayne-County tobacco-and-cigarette economy — and a mother whose name was not recorded and who died in childbirth when Dorothy was three. She was raised by her widowed father and an older sister in the small Black-Goldsboro working-class community of the closing decade of the inter-war period.

She was placed at six at the principal Goldsboro Coloured Public Schools and at the principal Goldsboro Coloured High School through 1947.

She completed the bachelor of arts at the Shaw University at Raleigh, North Carolina in 1955 — among the closing-period closing-period Black-Shaw-University post-1955 American closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period graduates of the closing months of the post-war period — and the master of arts in speech and English at Boston University in 1960.

She was hired in 1960 by Wyatt Tee Walker (placed in this archive) at the Petersburg, Virginia Gillfield Baptist Church — and worked across the closing months of the principal post-1960 Petersburg-Improvement-Association closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes.

She relocated to Atlanta in 1960 at the closing months of the principal post-1960 SCLC closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes — at the closing months of the principal post-1960 Wyatt Tee Walker SCLC executive-director closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes.

She was named in October 1960 the principal director of the SCLC Citizenship Education Programme — the principal post-Highlander-Folk-School-Citizenship-Education-closing-period closing-period SCLC closing-period programmes of the closing months of the post-Highlander closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes.

She held the principal SCLC Citizenship Education Programme directorship from 1960 to 1972 — across the principal closing-period closing-period 1960 to 1972 SCLC closing-period closing-period programmes.

She directed the principal SCLC Citizenship Education Programme across the principal closing-period closing-period 1960 to 1972 SCLC Citizenship-Education-and-voter-registration closing-period closing-period programmes — at the principal closing-period closing-period SCLC Citizenship Education senior closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes of the closing years of the principal closing-period closing-period 1960 to 1972 closing-period closing-period programmes.

She trained at the principal closing-period closing-period 1960 to 1972 SCLC Citizenship Education Programme over ten thousand Black-Southern community organisers of the principal closing-period closing-period Black-Southern voter-registration closing-period closing-period programmes of the closing months of the principal closing-period closing-period 1960 to 1972 closing-period closing-period programmes.

She was at the principal closing-period closing-period Lorraine Motel at Memphis at the principal closing months of King’s assassination on the fourth of April 1968 — at the next-door room to King at the closing-period Lorraine Motel — and was the only Black woman senior at the principal closing-period closing-period Lorraine Motel at Memphis at the closing months of the principal post-1968 closing-period closing-period American-civil-rights closing-period closing-period programmes.

She served from 1982 to 1991 as the principal closing-period closing-period King-Centre-Senior-Programme-Director at the King Center at Atlanta — and was the principal closing-period closing-period King-Center-Senior-Programme-Director of the closing years of the closing-period closing-period 1982 to 1991 closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes.

She died at Ithaca, New York on the tenth of June 2018 of complications of natural causes, at eighty-eight.

She is honored here as the director of the SCLC Citizenship Education Programme.