Loretta Ross

A Black academic, feminist, and activist who focuses on reproductive justice,

Loretta Ross has been a force for change for over 50 years. As a teenager, she was involved in anti-apartheid and anti-gentrification activism in Washington, DC, and was a community organizer until 2012. Loretta was the Executive Director of the DC Rape Crisis Clinic, the director of the Women of Color Programs for the National Organization for Women, and she is the founder of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective.

Her scholarship is extensive, and in addition to visiting professorships at Hampshire College and Smith College, she has written a number of books, including Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice and her 2021 work Calling In the Calling Out Culture. A rape survivor and the survivor of sterilization abuse at the age of 23, Loretta is a model of how to, in her own words, “survive and thrive despite traumas that disproportionately affect low-income women of color.”

You can learn more about Loretta by heading to her Makers: Women who Make America video here, or by listening to her podcast “Dred Feminist” at the link below!