By Eagle Newswire
Anita Hill, native Oklahoman attorney, author, educator and advocate for civil and women’s rights, will receive the 2019 Sankofa Freedom Award, presented by Tulsa City-County Library’s African-American Resource Center and the Tulsa Library Trust.
Hill will accept the award and give a presentation at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 15 at the Rudisill Regional Library, 1520 N. Hartford. This event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited.
Since receiving her juris doctorate from Yale Law School in 1980, Hill has taken passionate and purposeful steps toward eliminating inequality, and has spent decades advocating for gender and racial equality in financial and educational opportunities as well as in the workplace.
As a professor, Hill has taught courses on contracts and commercial law, gender, race, social policy and legal history. As a law firm advisor and workplace harassment commission leader, she has strived to establish better frameworks for addressing workplace abuses and discrimination. As an author, her written works have addressed subjects ranging from bankruptcy to equal educational opportunities.
In all of these pursuits, Hill has marked herself as a voice for those who are unable or unwilling to speak out against oppression and misconduct. A recipient of numerous awards, grants and honorary degrees, receiving the Sankofa Freedom Award is yet another testament to Hill’s unyielding efforts to better the lives of women and groups of people who have been and continue to be discriminated against.
Hill’s works include her 1998 memoir “Speaking Truth to Power” and the 2012 “Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race and Finding Home.” She co-edited the 1995 “Race, Gender and Power in America: The Legacy of the Hill-Thomas Hearings.” Her story is told in the 2013 documentary film “Anita: Speaking Truth to Power.”
Sankofa is a word from the Akan language, which is spoken in southern Ghana. Literally translated, Sankofa means: “We must go back and reclaim our past so we can move forward; so we understand why and how we came to be who we are today.” The Sankofa Freedom Award consists of a $10,000 cash prize and an engraved medallion. It is awarded biennially in February during African-American History Month to a nationally acclaimed individual who has dedicated his or her life to educating and improving the greater African-American community. Previous recipients of the Sankofa Freedom Award include: Iyanla Vanzant (2018), Tavis Smiley (2016), Susan L. Taylor (2014), Hill Harper (2012), Pearl Cleage (2010), Nikki Giovanni (2008) and Michael Eric Dyson (2006).
For more information about the Sankofa Freedom Award or the African-American Resource Center, call 918-549-7323 or visit www.tulsalibrary.org.
