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Dr. C. DeLores Tucker (1927-2005) served as Pennsylvania's Secretary of State
from 1971-1977. During her tenure, she chaired the Commission on Charitable
Organizations, which formulated and achieved passage of a strong solicitation
of Charitable Funds Act that stiffened standards and increased the registration
of charities from 400 to 8,000 and doubled the number of investigations and
hearings. As Chief Election Officer of the Commonwealth, she instituted the
first computerized candidate filing system in the nation, and as Chief Registration
Officer, also initiated computerization of the Corporation Bureau. She later
served as president of the Bethune DuBois Fund, Inc., which she founded in 1991,
and was the convening founder of the National Political Congress of Black Women,
Inc., of which she served as chair from 1992. Dr. Tucker also served as chair
of the Democratic National Committee Black Caucus, was the founding president
of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Association for Non-Violent Change, and launched
a historical publication entitled Vital Issues: The Journal of African-American
Speeches.
During her tenure as Secretary of State, she instituted the first Commission
on the Status of Women in Pennsylvania and was responsible for the Governor's
appointment of more women and minorities to Boards and Commissions, and more
women judges, than in the history of the Commonwealth up to that time. She also
led the effort to make Pennsylvania one of the first states to pass the Equal
Rights Amendment. As a member of the Democratic National Committee, Dr. Tucker
organized a woman's caucus and served on a Charter Commission to ensure that
all women had a fair share representation at all levels of the Democratic Party.
Dr. Tucker's civic and political activities included her participation with
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965. She was
also a delegate to the historic White House Conference on Civil Rights in 1962.
The more than three hundred awards with which she was honored during her lifetime
included the Philadelphia Urban League Whitney Young Award (1990), NAACP Thurgood
Marshall Award (1982), the NAACP Freedom Fund Award, Ebony Magazine's
"100 Most Influential Black Americans" (1972-1977), Ladies Home
Journal Nominee for Woman of the Year (1975, 1976), and the B'nai Birith
Community Service Award. She was also named by the National Women's Political
Caucus and Redbook Magazine as the woman best qualified to be Ambassador
to the United Nations.
She attended both Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania-Wharton
School, and received two honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from Morris College
in Alabama and Villa Maria College in Pennsylvania. The first African American
Secretary of State in the nation, she championed the Pennsylvania Equal Rights
Amendment and policies on affirmative action, voter registration by mail, and
lowering the voting age to 18. She also spearheaded the creation of the Commission
on the Status of Women and led a crusade critical of the music industry for
promoting lyrics that were demeaning to women, African Americans, and children.
Materials in the C. DeLores Tucker Papers include speeches, photograph albums,
loose photos, news clippings, scrapbooks, publications, obituaries, and files
kept by Tucker on the Bethune-DuBois Institute, the National Congress of Black
Women, and "Gangsta Rap" music.
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