ACORN Remembers Gloria Wilson
ACORN members and staff are honoring the memory of longtime ACORN member Gloria Wilson, who passed away on June 11th. Gloria was an active member since ACORN started in Little Rock in 1970. Over the last few years she’d been battling several serious illnesses.
ACORN Chief Organizer Wade Rathke describes the first time he met Gloria going house to house 36 years ago to find community members interested in joining ACORN:
When I hit Gloria’s door I found a young single mother with a couple of kids running around. I also found someone who was angry and who was ready. She liked every word I had to say. All I had to do was listen to her issues and keep saying yes, these where the kinds of things an organization like ACORN could handle if we could organize people to act. I can’t remember but she may have been the very first member that I signed up on the doors. Kids or no kids, I pulled her out of the house that minute to start hitting the doors of her neighborhood…
Over the years Gloria served in a number of different ACORN offices in the Arkansas and national offices, even spending time during the late 1980s as an ACORN staff member. In 1994, Gloria was one of the first activists from low- and moderate-income communities to be elected to the Little Rock City Board of Directors. There she helped save bus service from cuts and challenged big developers who threatened to ruin Little Rock City Hall. Read more about Gloria Wilson on the Chief Organizer's Blog.
