“The cameras were on the people in the picket line with do-rags on and talking and my friend and I looked at the TV and said ‘this doesn’t represent us’ and the next week we were on the picket line,” Fox continued. “I said I would give this thing two years. I thought that’s all it’d take for it to be over.”
Fox soon realized there would always be a struggle. There was always something that needed to be done.
She became involved in the Pittsburgh branch of the NAACP in 1955. She served as its executive director from 1966 to 1971 and has been a member of its board of directors for 50 years. During the tumultuous 1960s, the Cleveland native was instrumental in planning and executing demonstrations that led to the breaking down of racial barriers in the employment practices of many corporations including Mine Safety Appliance, United States Steel, University of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Board of Education, utility companies, other major department stores, and numerous construction projects.
“You have a sense of pride when you see something done that you’ve fought so hard for,” said Fox who retired from the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Mines in 1994. While employed there, she served as the Eastern Area Equal Opportunity Manager.
Fox has held several leadership positions with the National Organization for Women (NOW) including convener and president of the organization’s East Hills Branch; vice president of the first Pittsburgh chapter and a member of NOW’s National Board of Directors.
“I joined NOW in 1968 and I didn’t want to join it,” she said. “But it didn’t take long for me to see that Black women needed help because all throughout the Civil Rights Movement, you thought about men getting jobs but not many people thought about how Black women were being treated,” she said.
In the NAACP, Fox has been past president of the Women’s Auxiliary (now known as WIN-Women in NAACP); a member of the Human Rights Dinner Committee; co-chair of the Homer S. Brown Award Committee; chair of the Women’s Rights Committee (an off-shoot of this committee was the organization, Sisters-In-Force, which served as an advocate and advisory/support group to female police officers and recruits); member of the board of directors of the Pennsylvania State Conference of NAACP Branches and chair of its Legislative Committee; chair of the Pittsburgh Branch of the NAACP Membership Committee and Treasurer. She has also served as co-chair of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women, and convener of the Allegheny County Women’s Political Caucus.
A member of The Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross, where she has served on the parish’s Vestry, Fox is one of the founding members of the Council of Black Federal Employees, and has served as its vice president. After serving for 32 years, Fox retired as a member of the Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations. She served two terms as the commission’s president.
She was one of the leading advocates in the successful drive to add sexual orientation to the list of those protected from discrimination in the Pittsburgh City Code. She organized and managed four Florence Reizenstein award dinners, which were sponsored by a group of supporters of the Pittsburgh Human Relations Commission. She is a former member of the board of trustees of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. She is a board member of Gwen’s Girls and is a founder and former president of Freedom Unlimited Inc. since its inception in 1982.
Fox has coordinated the Freedom Unlimited Inc. Annual Holiday Food Drive. Over the past three decades, she and her holiday food drive committee have raised more than $500,000 in cash and in-kind contributions. Those contributions have enabled Freedom Unlimited to provide more than 12,000 food packages to needy families in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area to help them enjoy the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
Each food package contains a turkey and other food sufficient to provide a traditional holiday dinner with all the trimmings. Freedom Unlimited’s primary objective is to promote self-sufficiency to the economically disadvantaged.
When asked what her major accomplishments were, Fox needed time to think.
“It’s hard to say. You don’t see yourself individually because of the group. If you are there and have a leadership position then you are out in front,” she said. “It’s good to see the Pittsburgh Board of Education now. There were no Black teachers in the schools and to see the board the way they are now is great. I wasn’t in the struggle fighting for friendship, I just wanted us to be able to get jobs.”
Fox has noticed a lot of positive advancements for Blacks since she began fighting for equality as a teenager.
“We’re able to get a good education now and we’re able to live where we want and our children can get good education and good jobs now,” she said. “I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would see a Black man as President of the United States. I’m glad that the Republicans are in so that they can get off of him because I fear for his life.”
She also knows there are still Civil Rights wars that need to be won.
“Now we are more dependent on The Powers that Be. The same White people that are implementing the laws are the same people writing the laws. When do we get the power?” asked Fox who enjoys playing solitaire and reading.
“The power is gradually coming. The most powerful people in the country are President Obama and Eric Holder.
“We’ve got more to lose now and there’s no place to go but down. We can’t go back to the 1960s. We’ve got to get up and make some noise.”
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