NPR

Civil Rights Leader Dorothy Cotton Dies At 88

Cotton was the education director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. She focused on empowering ordinary people to exercise their rights.
Dorothy Cotton, who was educational director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the civil rights era, has died at 88.

Dorothy Cotton, a leader in the civil rights movement who educated thousands of African-Americans about their rights and the power of organizing, has died at 88.

She died at a retirement community in Ithaca, N.Y., the Ithaca Journal reports. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference confirmed her death to the Associated Press.

Beginning in the 1960s, Cotton was the educational director at the

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