After seeking public assistance, Tillmon became subject to harassment by welfare officials, including invasive "midnight raids," wherein officials would inspect residences looking for evidence of a hidden windfall, proof of a man in residence, or evidence of secret profits.
[1] Within months, she and her friends had founded Aid to Needy Children-Mothers Anonymous, one of the first grassroots welfare mothers' organizations.
[1] George Wiley, a chemist and civil rights activist, became the latter's first executive director while Tillmon served as its first chairman.
She then returned to California where she worked as a legislative aid and served on welfare committees at both the state and local levels.
[9] While Wiley and his advisers tried to mobilize the working poor, especially white blue-collar workers, into the welfare rights movement, welfare mothers, led by Tillmon, sought to align with a women's movement and gain support from feminist organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW).
[citation needed] Tillmon herself attempted to broaden the horizons of the feminist movement by redefining poverty as a "women's issue," delivering speeches to mostly-female audiences in which she frequently compared the bureaucracy of welfare to a sexist marriage.
In her landmark 1972 essay, "Welfare Is a Woman's Issue[11]," which was published in Ms.,[1] she emphasized women's right to adequate income, regardless of whether they worked in a factory or at home raising children.