Ground-breaking Activist Loretta J. Ross to be Featured Speaker
What: Loretta J. Ross, the founder and national director of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, will speak about reproductive rights and justice, issues that grew out of her own experiences with rape, incest, and forced sterilization.
When: Wednesday, March 26 at 7 p.m.
Where: Rittenberg Lounge in Mather Hall on the Trinity Campus.
Background: The SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective is made up of 70 organizations of women of color in the United States. Ross is not only the head of the group, but she has authored the book, Undivided Right: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice, which was published in 2004. That same year, she also co-directed the National March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., a demonstration that was among the largest in U.S. history.
Prior to that, Ross was the founder and executive director of the National Center for Human Rights Education in Atlanta. She is considered an expert on human rights, women’s issues, diversity, hate groups and right-wing organizations.
Ross has been organizing and mobilizing people around the issues of reproductive rights and human rights for more than 30 years. She was one of the first African-American women to direct a rape crisis center in this country. From 1985 to 1989, she served as the director of Women of Color Programs for the National Organization for Women and was responsible for the first national conference on Women of Color and Reproductive Rights in 1987.
Ross has testified before the United Nations, Congress, and the Food and Drug Administration about women’s health and human rights. She is on the board of directors for the Foundation for African-American Women; the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission; the Committee on Women, Population and the Environment; and SisterLove Women’s AIDS Project.
A political commentator for Pacifica News Service, Ross has appeared on Good Morning America, The Phil Donahue Show, The Charlie Rose Show, CNN, and BET.
The sponsors of Ross’s lecture are the Departments of History, Public Policy, American Studies, International Studies, Philosophy, and Sociology, as well as the Human Rights Program, the Multicultural Affairs Office, and the Women & Gender Resource Action Center.
The program will be preceded by a reception from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Both the reception and the talk are free and open to the public.