Aileen Hernandez

Who they were

Personal life While working as an organizer for the ILGWU in 1957, Aileen Hernandez married Alfonso Hernandez, a garment cutter. They divorced in 1961. [ 1 ] Hernandez donated 187 boxes of personal papers to the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College in 2014. [ 1 ] ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Aileen C. Hernandez papers was invoked but never defined (see the help page ).

Aileen Hernandez was an African-American union organizer, civil rights activist, and women's rights activist. She served as the president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) between 1970 and 1971, and was the first woman to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Early life

Educated at: Howard University and California State University, Los Angeles.

Early life and education Hernandez was born Aileen Blanche Clarke on May 23, 1926, in Brooklyn , New York, to Jamaican immigrants Charles Henry Clarke Sr., an art supply executive, and Ethel Louise Hall, a seamstress. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] As the only African-American family on their block in Bay Ridge , [ 4 ] they were subjected to racial discrimination from their neighbors, something she would later point to as a reason for her interest in political activism. [ 1 ] [

Path and career

Death Hernandez died on February 13, 2017, at the age of 90 from complications related to dementia. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] The ACLU's deputy director Dorothy Ehrlich , who had known Hernandez from the 1970s, noted that "Aileen Hernandez’s entire life embodied the movement forward for women and people of color, and her significant role in that history will never be forgotten." [ 4 ]

Why this date

Aileen Hernandez appears on our February 13 calendar for 2017 as a death entry.