This is the twelve show in our series on the importance of voting with the great wisdom keeper, Dorothy Pittman Hughes.

Why is it important to vote?

Does our vote even matter?

What is democracy?

THESE SEGMENTS ARE MUCH SHORTER THAN OUR USUAL PROGRAMS… SO THEY ARE EASILY CONSUMED!

Dorothy Pittman Hughes is a feminist, child-welfare advocate, African-American activist, public speaker, author, pioneering African-American small business owner, and mother of three daughters. She was a co-founder of Ms. Magazine in 1972. She organized the first shelter for battered women in New York City and co-founded the New York City Agency for Child Development (now the New York City Administration for Children’s Services). Hughes also co-founded with Gloria Steinem and others the Women’s Action Alliance in 1971. The two women toured together speaking about gender, class and race throughout the 1970s.

Hughes owned and operated three early child-care centers helping establish the modern convention in the 1960s. She also owned an office supply business in Harlem from 1997 to 2007 and wrote about her experiences in Wake Up and Smell the Dollars! (2011) and I’m Just Saying… It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing (The Gentrification of Harlem) (2012), advocating small business ownership to other African Americans as a form of empowerment, as well as advising how to avoid potential pitfalls specific to African Americans.

The National Portrait Gallery selected for its collection a photograph of Hughes and Steinem sharing a large skirt, each with a raised fist salute to demonstrate feminist solidarity. The photograph was shot by photographer Dan Wynn for Esquire Magazine in 1971.

Oprah Winfrey honored Hughes as one of America’s “Great Moms.”