Dorothy Jean Tillman (née Wright; May 12, 1947) is an American politician, civil rights activist and former Chicago, Illinois alderman.
Prior to her career as an alderman, Tillman was active in the Civil Rights Movement, working for Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as an activist.
[4] Tillman's parents divorced when she was a child which resulted in her spending her childhood between Montgomery with her father and Pensacola, Florida, where her mother had remarried and relocated to.
[5] Tillman joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as a trainee and field staff organizer in 1963.
Tillman was involved in organizing King's move into a Chicago tenement in early 1966 and the launch of his campaign in July 1966.
By 1967, Tillman and her husband, Jimmy, moved to San Francisco shortly after their marriage and became involved in a successful campaign to improve public transport services to their neighborhood.
The momentum created by several successful grassroots campaigns Tillman helped organize led to the election of Chicago's first African American mayor, Harold Washington in 1983.
She authored a bill, passed unanimously in 2002, forcing companies who perform contracts with the council to declare any past ties with slavery.
[citation needed] During one loud session of the City Council, Tillman gained the attention of the entire floor when she produced a pistol from her handbag and brandished it about.
[10] This led some aldermen and Chicago citizens to call for a censure on Tillman's professional ethics, and possible mandatory gun safety training.