It’s Wednesday and time for the Community Organizer of the week. This week’s Community Organizer Hall of Famer is Julius Hobson, Sr. (1922 – 1977) submitted by Dawn E. Robinson of Washington, DC.

Some of the gains of Hobson’s work include dismantling discrimintion in hiring in Washington, DC [The first black busdrivers were hired as a result of a threatened boycott after successful boycotts on retailers.]; desegregating rental housing with the passing of a house ordinance by D.C. Commissioners; desegretating hospital wards. Below is a brief bio from the DC Public Library “Guide to the Papers of Julius Hobson”

Julius W. Hobson (1922 – 1977) was a civil rights leader whose political career grew out of his grass roots activism in the District of Columbia beginning in the 1950s. In the District, he worked for equity in public school funding and fair rental housing, opposed D.C. freeways and police brutality. He was PTA President at Slowe Elementary School (1953), President of the Woodridge Civic Association (1950 -1953), Vice President of the citywide Federation of Civic Associations (1955 -1957) and a member of the NAACP’s Executive Committee (1958). In 1961, leaders at the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) selected Hobson as chair of their local chapter. In 1968, he was elected to the District’s Board of Education. In 1974, Hobson was elected councilman-at-large on the Statehood Party ticket in the first City Council election in the District in over a century. As a Councilman, Hobson continued to push for local educational reform, especially while serving as chair of the Educational and Youth Affairs Committee, as well as an end to all forms of racial discrimination in the District.

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