The Dorothy Cotton Institute
We seek to honor and perpetuate the legacy of an important Civil Rights leader, Ms. Dorothy Cotton, by establishing a nationally renowned education center, the Dorothy Cotton Institute, in Ithaca, New York.
A key Civil Rights leader, close colleague to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the former Director of Education program for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Ms. Cotton played an instrumental role in bringing large numbers of people to the nonviolent Civil Rights movement. Through the Citizenship Education Program, she helped thousands of disenfranchised African Americans transform a debilitating view of themselves as “powerless victims” into an empowering appreciation of what “being citizen” meant. This educational process enabled and motivated people to join together and take bold action – even risking their lives – for significant social change.
The achievements of the U.S Civil Rights movement have become a compelling and inspiring model for liberation struggles around the world. But while the movement’s freedom marches, sit-ins and other forms of non-violence resistance are commonly known, the transformative educational and grassroots leadership development work that emboldened people to march remain in the shadows. In fact, Ms. Cotton calls the Citizenship Education Program “one of the best-kept secrets of the Civil Rights movement.”
More than forty years later, Ms. Cotton continues to be an inspiring educator on nonviolent social change, but her story has hardly been told and is at risk of being lost. Ms. Cotton’s own journey in rejecting victimhood and bitterness, refusing to succumb to injustice and exclusion, and creating a life dedicated to personal transformation, connection and joy provides vital lessons for future generations of social change agents. Her lifework – based on the philosophy and practices of nonviolence, reconciliation and restoration, and grassroots leadership development – offers models upon which they can build.
To preserve, teach about and extend these important stories of African-American and women’s history and their lessons for hopeful social change, we are working closely with Ms. Cotton to create the Dorothy Cotton Institute (DCI). The Institute’s mission is “to be a catalyst for the learning, exploration and advancement of practices that transform personal and collective consciousness; open new, nonviolent pathways to peace, justice, restoration, and healing; and promote strategies for inspired, effective grassroots community organizing.”
To carry out this mission, the DCI will:
- Offer a retrospective on Ms. Cotton’s life and achievements through film, music and an extraordinary collection of her photographs, correspondence, and historically significant literature;
- Document, preserve and teach about the Citizenship Education Program and its important, but under-recognized, practices of grassroots leadership development that helped thousands of disenfranchised people recognize themselves as powerful change agents;
- and Through Fellowships and innovative programming, support new generations of social change agents and scholars who will further the empowering philosophies and practices central to Ms. Cotton’s work.
In Phase 1, we will:
- Create a permanent archive of Ms. Cotton’s photographs, letters, speeches, historically significant literature, etc.;
- Engage a professional documentary film-maker to create an engaging documentary highlighting Ms. Cotton’s life, work, educational practices, and philosophies of nonviolent social change;
- Create a traveling exhibit and website offering a retrospective on Ms. Cotton’s life and work. These will include a portable oral history booth to collect visitors’ stories about their own roles in the Civil Rights and other social change movements;
- Develop a teaching guide and training sessions about the Citizenship Education Program, its philosophies and practices, and its role in the Civil Rights movement; and Launch the Dorothy Cotton Institute Fellowship Program. Fellowships will support grassroots social change activists and scholars contributing to an understanding of social change to develop projects in keeping with Ms. Cotton’s philosophies and practices for nonviolent transformative change.
In Phase 2, we will:
- Create a permanent Visitors Center, which will attract thousands of visitors annually from around the globe. The Center will also serve as a convening space for social change agents to gather, teach and learn from each other.
Located in Ithaca, N.Y. (Ms. Cotton’s chosen home), the Institute will benefit from relationships with the area’s outstanding colleges and universities (including Cornell University and Ithaca College) and links to other regional sites of historic significance (e.g., Harriet Tubman’s home in Auburn, Frederick Douglas’s home in Rochester, the National Women’s History Museum in Seneca Falls, and numerous points on the Underground Railroad). The area also draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year to its lakes, wine country, cultural festivals, educational programs, and summer theater.
A Steering Committee is working closely with Ms. Cotton to realize this vision. We expect to have each of the elements of Phase 1 under way before the end of 2009. To carry out this first phase of the project, we are seeking to raise $250,000.