Hilda Wilson
1910-1975
Hilda C. Wilson was born in Jacksonville, Florida on April 8, 1910. She moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in her late teens. Her activities in Philadelphia, in addition to being a competent wife and mother included some of the following: worker, president of her block association, member of St. Augustine Church Episcopal Church, Sunday School teacher and superintendent, defense worker, garment worker, sponsor for African students, and the first member of the Wilson household to walk a picket line in the early sixties.
In 1963, because of her way with young people and her demonstrated love for Black people, she was asked to be in charge of the Philadelphia Office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She organized parents of civil rights workers, raised funds, organized and participated in supportive demonstrations in Philadelphia. In late 1965, she became a worker with parents in the Philadelphia Tutorial Project.
Although she attended SNCC staff meeting on the Gulf coast of Mississippi in November 1965; it was in 1966, she came “home” for the first time. She worked in the Mississippi Delta as a member of the Poor People’s Corporation for six months, training people in the use of the power sewing machine. She came back to Philadelphia vowing to move to Mississippi to live out her life there. She came to live in Mississippi permanently in December 1967, and continued her work with PPC.. In 1968, she began to work with Friends of the Children of Mississippi Head Start Program, working in Humphries, Wayne, Clark, and Green Counties. She continued working for “change” in Jackson and other Mississippi communities as a consultant in Black History and parent work. She served for a while as a member and as president of the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Jackson, as a board member of Operation Shoe String, and a member of the advisory board of Mississippi Institute of Early Childhood.
Hilda Wilson died November 20, 1975 in Jackson, MS.
(Thanks to Diary of a Historian for this remembrance.)
