Bessie Hillman (born Bas Sheva Abramowitz; May 15, 1889 – December 23, 1970) was a labor activist and founder of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.

The fourth child of ten, she spent her first fifteen years in Russia with her parents Emanuel Abramowitz, a commercial agent, and Sarah Rabinowitz, an innkeeper.

[3] Arriving in the United States knowing only Yiddish and some Russian, Abramowitz moved into a boardinghouse owned by her relatives and began working at the Hart Schaffner & Marx garment factory as a button sewer.

[2] The movement gained the support and funding of the Women's Trade Union League, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and Jane Addams of the Hull House.

Disagreements among its membership led Abramowitz to split off into the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, alongside Sidney Hillman, whom she would marry two years later in 1916.

[5] In 1961, Hillman was invited by Eleanor Roosevelt to join the Committee on Protective Labor Legislation as part of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women.

[5] During negotiations surrounding the 1910 strike, Abramowitz met Sidney Hillman, another worker at Hart Schaffner & Marx who was helping to lead the movement.

In 1916, Abramowitz and Hillman made their engagement public when they led a group of clothing workers in the May Day parade, arms linked.