Ethel Minor
*Ethel Minor was born on this date in 1938. She was a Black journalist, teacher, human rights activist, and civil rights activist.
She was born into a large and accomplished Episcopalian Family in Chicago. She converted to Catholicism later in life and remained extremely religious. Lorne Cress Love, Francis Cress Welsing, and Barbara Cress Lawrence were her cousins. From 1960 to 1962, Minor studied mass communications in Chicago and in Colombia, South America. She became highly proficient in the Spanish language.
While in Colombia, Minor met Palestinians and Syrians, who had moved there in the wake of the 1948 Israeli war against and occupation of Palestine. The relationships she developed, along with her love for Africa, Palestine, and the Middle East, blossomed and grew even stronger upon her return to the United States. She worked with but did not join the Nation of Islam from 1962 to 1964. She served, among other capacities, as a Spanish language translator for the Elijah Muhammad.
She met and worked with Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, Akbar Muhammad, and Sister Christine Johnson, the then-principal of the Nation of Islam’s school. At the age of 33, in 1966, shortly after the Black Power March in Mississippi, Ethel moved to Atlanta and joined the national staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
She became Kwame Ture’s secretary, editor of SNCC’s newsletter, and served as a staff member in its National Communications Department from 1966 to 1968. From 1986 to 1996, Minor was the president of the San Antonio Branch of the NAACP. During her time as president, she would organize the San Antonio Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day March Celebration. Along with local civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Claude Black, Harry Burns, G.J. Sutton, Charles Hudspeth, and others, Minor participated in marches and protests throughout Bexar County. She also served as the church secretary of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church.
After retiring from her role as president in 1997, Minor was approached by her community and asked to re-assume the post. She was again reelected in 2003. Ethel Minor died on September 21, 2022, in Chicago of natural causes at the age of 84. She was a talented bilingual journalist, alliance builder, and organizer committed to civil and international human rights.
