Dorie Ann Ladner, a Hattiesburg native and unsung civil rights activist, has passed away at the age of 81.
Ladner’s family announced that she died from COVID-19 complications last Monday. The longtime fighter for freedom and equality served vital roles within the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and various voter drives in her home state of Mississippi before moving to Washington, D.C., where she lived for 50 years before her death.
“My beloved sister, Dorie Ladner, died peacefully on Monday, March 11, 2024,” Ladner’s younger sister, Joyce Ladner, wrote on Facebook. “She will always be my big sister who fought tenaciously for the underdog and the dispossessed. She left a profound legacy of service.
Dorie Ladner began her unofficial work as an activist at the age of 12 as her sister recalled in a phone interview with the Associated Press the first time she remembered Dorie standing up to racism. The two sisters – 15 months apart – were buying donuts from a store in Palmer’s Crossing.
“The white cashier came up behind Dorie and hit her on the butt. She turned around and beat him over the head with those donuts,” Joyce, a former interim president at Howard University, said. “We were scared but you know how you have that feeling of knowing you had done the right thing? That’s what overcame us.”
Dorie Ladner and her sister then organized an NAACP Youth Council Chapter in Hattiesburg before attending Jackson State University, where they continued to fight against segregation policies. Upon enrolling at Tougaloo College in 1961, they became active members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Over the following years, Ladner committed to helping Black Mississippians register to vote, sometimes drawing threats from the Ku Klux Klan and other anti-integration groups. Ladner was a key organizer for Mississippi Freedom Summer. She also attended every major civil rights protest from 1963-1968.
Upon moving to Washington in 1974, Dorie Ladner worked as a social worker for D.C. General Hospital for 28 years before retiring. She leaves behind a daughter, Yodit Churnet, and a 13-year-old grandson. Funeral arrangments have not been announced at this time.
