Johnnie Tillmon


Johnnie Tillmon was a welfare rights activist. She was born Johnnie Lee Percy, and her mother died in childbirth when Johnnie was five years old. In 1944 she went to live with her aunt. She left to marry James Tillmon in 1948, but they divorced in 1952. In 1959 she moved to California to join her brothers there. By that time she was a single mother to six children. In California she organized workers and became involved in a community association called the Nickerson Garden Planning Organization. In 1963 she became ill and was encouraged to begin receiving welfare. Seeing how people on welfare were treated, she organized those on welfare in the housing project, and in 1963 founded ANC Mothers Anonymous, which was one of the first grassroots welfare mothers’ organizations. This organization later became part of the National Welfare Rights Organization. Tillmon became the first chair of the NWRO. In 1972 she became its executive director when George Wiley resigned. Wiley had been trying to mobilize the working poor, whereas Tillmon tried to align with the feminist movement. Tillmon's 1972 essay, "Welfare Is a Woman's Issue," which was published in Ms., emphasized women's right to adequate income, regardless of whether they worked in a factory or at home raising children. The funding for the NWRO had gone down by the time Tillmon became the executive director, and the NWRO ended in bankruptcy in March 1975; however, Tillmon continued fighting for welfare rights at the state and local levels.
The National Union of the Homeless used what was called a "Johnnie Tillmon model" of organizing, named after her.