| Name | Mary Mostert |
| Total comments | 0 |
| Last post | Mar 20, 2008 |
| Join date | Nov 03, 2005 |
| Mary@bannerofliberty.com | |
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| URL | www.bannerofliberty.com |
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| Bio | Mary was involved in politics before she was old enough to vote and was writing articles for national magazines at the age of nineteen. She organized one of the first interracial youth groups in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1940s as a teenager, and was involved nationally and internationally in the civil rights movement and the peace movement. As executive director of the Independent Political forum, she was one of 52 American Women, including Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr., who met hundreds of women from other nations, including the Soviet Union, in Geneva, Switzerland in 1962 to petition delegates at the Disarmament Conference to sign the first Nuclear Test-ban treaty. At the time, almost the entire Senate and President John F. Kennedy were opposed to halting the testing of nuclear bombs. However, the small ad hoc "Mother's Lobby" helped change public opinion. In approximately six months the Senate approved the treaty with six dissenting votes and, after they picketed the White House, JFK signed it. She was the first, or one of the first, female political commentators published in a major metropolitan newspaper in the 1960s and one of the first women building contractors running her own construction company in the 1960s-1970s repairing, building and managing inner-city properties. She served on redevelopment boards in the inner city of Rochester, New York, implementing President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty programs. Over the years she won three architectural awards for the restoration of historic buildings, served on committees in the inner city and received annual awards for her work in civil rights. |