Activist Margaret Sloan-Hunter Dies at 57
PlanetOut Network October 2004

The gay community has lost a tireless activist who undertook her first high-profile civil rights project when she was just 14 years old. Margaret Sloan-Hunter, an early editor at Ms. Magazine, a poet and an activist fighting for feminist, lesbian and African-American causes died Sept. 23.

Sloan-Hunter died in Oakland, Calif., after what her family called a prolonged illness. She was 57.

At 14, she joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a group that worked on poverty and urban issues on behalf of the African-American community in Chicago. Even before she was old enough to vote she was organizing rent strikes and tenant unions, and she spearheaded a campaign to get the lead out of the drinking water pumped into homes on Chicago's predominantly African American West Side.

Sloan-Hunter fought alongside several civil rights leaders in her day. She worked with Martin Luther King Jr. at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and in the Open Housing marches. She worked with Jesse Jackson as a coordinator of the Hunger Task Force Team in Operation Breadbasket. And she gave more than a thousand lectures on feminism and racism at colleges throughout the world with fellow feminist Gloria Steinem in the 1970's.

In addition to her activism, Sloan-Hunter was an accomplished organizer and founded several organizations. At 17, she founded the Junior Catholic Inter-Racial Council. That group was a mix of suburban and inner-city students who talked about problems with racism and worked on racial problems. In 1973 she founded the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO), which tackled some of the same race and feminist issues.

In 1975, she and her daughter moved to California, where they established the Women's Foundation. She and her daughter, who friends say was also her best friend, worked as organizers with the Feminist School for Girls and Berkeley Women's Center.

Through her activism and her generally outgoing personality, she still had friends she had made back in kindergarten. Her friend Karen Thompson said in the 12 years she knew Sloan-Hunter, she quickly grew to love a friend who loved her back in such a singular way.

"Margaret. She was very opinionated, very smart, she loved words and she loved arguing. She was tough, but once she decided to love you, you were a part of her forever," said Thompson. "She was a Gemini, so you know what that means -- 75 percent of the time she was good and real nice to you, the other 25 percent of the time she was just good for you."

Instead of a somber funeral, Thompson said her friends and family will hold a memorial party and dance at the Montclair Women's Culture Arts Club in Oakland on Oct. 29. A Web site the family set up in her memory invites people to her memorial party with a quote from Sloan-Hunter.

"We women are the best thing going -- we are warm, passionate, we cry and we live! Let's celebrate."If you'd like to know more, you can find stories related to Activist Margaret Sloan-Hunter at www.margaretsloanhunter.com