Welcome,
When I think about people leaving their mark in history I think about their courage and their willingness to stand up and speak out. Loretta Ross is one of those courageous and willing souls that has taken the brave leap to speak out. Both her message and her voice are big. Powerhouse is an understatement. Yet her boldness has a soft, tender, open hand and heart.
Attending her online classes, I sense that Loretta sees and hears things you don’t even know are lurking around inside your own body and life. It can feel unnerving or it can remind you to remind yourself, “I am in the presence of greatness in a woman that has knowledge I need.” An energy of kindness pervades her message which at times can sting or even hurt.
Loretta cuts to the very heart of the matter as she addresses both fear and ignorance in culture and society. She has recently been inducted to the Women’s Hall of Fame and I know this comes from the fact that Loretta has protected what is crucial to the development of humanities, which is a sacred spirit of goodness often hidden in the shadows of the dark.
Some people talk about creating change. Then there are women like Loretta Ross who live the change. Who Loretta is and what she represents teaches and models what is truly the voice of history, brought forward as potent medicine of change to create a better world and better, kinder, loving, human beings. Please read about Loretta Ross this Women’s History Month.
With Pleasure,
Debbie
Loretta J. Ross is a Professor at Smith College in Northampton, MA in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender. She teaches courses on white supremacy, human rights, and calling in the calling out culture. She has taught at Hampshire College and Arizona State University.
She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law degree awarded in 2003 from Arcadia University and a second honorary doctorate degree awarded from Smith College in 2013. She also has credits towards a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from Emory University.
She serves as a consultant for Smith College, collecting oral histories of feminists of color for the Sophia Smith Collection, which also contains her personal archives. Loretta also is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellow, Class of 2022, for her work as an advocate of Reproductive Justice and Human Rights.
Loretta’s activism began when she was tear-gassed at a demonstration as a first-year student at Howard University in 1970. As a teenager, she was involved in anti-apartheid and anti-gentrification activism in Washington, DC as a founding member of the DC Study Group.
As part of a 50-year history in social justice activism until her retirement from community organizing in 2012, she was the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective from 2005-2012 and co-created the theory of Reproductive Justice in 1994.
Loretta was National Co-Director of April 25, 2004, March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., the largest protest march in U.S. history at that time with 1.15 million participants. She founded the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE) in Atlanta, Georgia from 1996-2004.
She launched the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the 1980s and was the national program director of the National Black Women’s Health Project. Loretta was one of the first African American women to direct a rape crisis center in the 1970s, launching her career by pioneering work on violence against women, as the third Executive Director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center.
She is a member of the Women’s Media Center’s Progressive Women’s Voices. Watch Makers: Women Who Make America video.
Loretta has co-written three books on reproductive justice: Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice in 2004; Reproductive Justice: An Introduction in March 2017; and Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique in October 2017. Her newest book, Calling In the Calling Out Culture is forthcoming later in 2023.
Loretta is a rape survivor, forced to raise a child born of incest, and also a survivor of sterilization abuse at the age of 23. She is a model of how to survive and thrive despite the traumas that disproportionately affect low-income women of color.
Loretta is a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. The one thing left on her bucket list is to see Venus and Serena Williams play tennis live. She is an avid pinochle player, competing in tournaments across the country because this is how she balances her activist life with apolitical hobbies.
https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-2022/loretta-j-ross
https://lorettajross.com/callingin-online
Awakening Body & Life 