Two long-time Democratic community organizers, Dora Rucker and Margaret Scrivens, were honored Saturday with the Lifetime Achievement Long Haul award by The Tennessee Alliance for Progress.
We are proud and honored to count Dora and Margaret as respected senior members of our party. Below are excerpts from today’s Daily News Journal on these two outstanding Rutherford County Democratic women.
Dora Rucker:
Rucker was born in 1910 and she began her political activities in the 1970s when local black business leader Robert Scales, running as the first black to ever sit on the Murfreesboro City Council, sparked her excitement and optimism.
Today, as a senior member of the Rutherford County Democratic Party, Dora Rucker educates young women on important issues that affect them and seniors on the use of voting machines.
She served as Democratic representative on the Rutherford County Election Commission for 14 years, where she not only represented Democrats, but women, people of color and seniors. With her inspiring and uplifting nature, she continues to cultivate networks of old and new leaders and activists.
In 2008, in her late 90s, she still phoned, campaigned, organized events and made appearances on behalf of local candidates. Among her many awards are the 1993 Tennessee Award of Merit from former Gov. Ned McWherter, a 2001 Tennessee General Assembly Resolution and the 2008 Local Obama-Biden Campaign Recognition Award, for service to the local area presidential campaign.
Margaret Scrivens:
Scrivens became officially proactive in 1952, when she demonstrated against segregated schools in support of a lawsuit, which became part of the 1954 Brown Case. In 1960, as a public housing resident, she founded a tenants’ council that organized on behalf of tenants’ rights. In 1967, she became a founding member and publicity chair of the Organization of Minority Women in Wilmington, Del.
She has worked in a diverse number of political campaigns, including Sen. Joseph Biden’s first campaign in 1971, and Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign in 1988 when he won New York City. In Tennessee, she was appointed chair of the Labor and Industry Committee of (State NAACP) Tennessee where she formed relationships with local unions as well as their umbrella organizations. She has also worked extensively with various branches of the NAACP, and served in Nashville as Treasurer from 1995 to 2008 when she moved to Murfreesboro.
Scrivens currently has been appointed by the chair of the Rutherford County Democratic Women to form a committee, write a plan and, with the aid of other progressive groups, implement a grassroots reorganization of the Rutherford County Democrats.
Scrivens has been honored eight times by the NAACP, and has been given two testimonial dinners by the Labor Movement.
WOW, I want to say thank you to both of these amazing women who have worked and fought for the good of others for so many decades. Bravo!
I’d also like to thank Margaret Scrivens for the wonderful slippers that she personally knitted and donated to the fund raiser at Cannonsburgh. I was the lucky winner and it’s clear that she put great skill and love into making them. Thank you, again, Margaret!
This could not happen to 2 finer women. Both are shining examples of all that makes us proud to be Democrats.