• She was born Dorothy Jean Ridley on October 2, 1938, in Lumpkin, Georgia.
• Hughes was a child care leader who set up the first shelter for abused women in New York City.
• Sconiers Funeral Home in Columbus, Georgia, said that Hughes died on December 1 at the home of her daughter and son-in-law in Tampa, Florida.

Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a pioneering Black feminist, child welfare advocate, and activist who co-founded Ms. Magazine with Gloria Steinem, had a powerful speaking partnership with her, and was in one of the most famous photos of the feminist movement, has died. She turned 84.

Maurice Sconiers of the Sconiers Funeral Home in Columbus, Georgia, said that Hughes died on December 1 at the home of her daughter and son-in-law in Tampa, Florida. The home said it didn’t know what had killed the person. Hughes wasn’t as well-known as Steinem, but she and Steinem worked together in a big way at a time when feminism was seen as a movement of mostly white middle-class women. Steinem said that Hughes helped her feel more at ease when speaking in public.

In one of the most famous pictures of the movement, taken in October 1971, the two men raised their right arms in the Black Power salute.

Hughes was a child care leader who set up the first shelter for abused women in New York City and helped start the New York City Agency for Child Development.
According to a biography on the Ms. Magazine website, she met Steinem in 1968 when Steinem, who was a journalist at the time, was writing a story about Pitman Hughes’ child care centre for New York Magazine. From 1969 to 1973, they talked about gender and race issues all over the country at colleges, community centres, and other places.

Hughes’s family wrote in an obituary posted by the funeral home that she was born Dorothy Jean Ridley on October 2, 1938, in Lumpkin, Georgia.

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