AILEEN HERNANDEZ
1926-2017
S.F. civil rights activist, labor leader and feminist was the second president of the National Organization for Women.
A City Hall memorial will be held Monday for Aileen Clarke Hernandez, an entrenched San Francisco civil rights activist, labor leader and feminist, and the second national president of the National Organization for Women.
Ms. Hernandez died Feb. 13 of complications of dementia in a memory care community in Orange County where she had been in living to be near her niece, Annie Clarke. She was 90.
“Aileen was the strongest and most influential woman leader on behalf of minorities and women that we have seen in this country,” said Belva Davis, who was the first black woman to become a TV newscaster in the West, at San Francisco’s KPIX-TV, an achievement she attributes largely to the inspiration of Ms. Hernandez.
“If you cannot organize, you cannot have an impact,” said Davis, “and she was one of the
greatest organizers of people and causes that we have ever had.”
Ms. Hernandez’s impact was recognized in a proclamation by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on her 90th birthday, May 23.
“I grew up knowing about Aileen and knowing her significance in the African American community,” said board President London Breed, who read the proclamation. “Her impact on issues related to race and gender was national, but we had her here in San Francisco.”
Among the list of advocacy groups that Ms. Hernandez either started or ran are NOW, Black Women Organized for Action in San Francisco, Black Women Stirring the Waters and the California Women’s Agenda, an action alliance of more than 500 advocacy organizations statewide.
In 2005, Ms. Hernandez was among a group of female activists worldwide who were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“She was to me a champion,” said the Rev. Cecil Williams of San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church. “She took things seriously and expanded her resources in ways that touched a lot of people.”
Aileen Blanche Clarke was born and raised in Brooklyn, where her father sold paintbrushes and her mother was a homemaker. An outstanding student, she attended Howard University, where she was introduced to politics and became active in the NAACP.
She came West in 1951 when she was hired as an organizer with the West Coast division of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, based in Los Angeles. While there, she earned her master’s degree and met and married Alfonso Hernandez, in 1957. They were divorced in 1961.
Her reputation traveled, and when Lyndon Baines Johnson was elected president, in 1964, he appointed Ms. Hernandez as the only woman on the five-person Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In that capacity, she was a featured speaker at the Commission on the Status of Women Conference, where NOW was conceived, in June 1966. Ms. Hernandez later resigned the EEOC in protest of its inaction on sex discrimination cases. She was named executive vice president of NOW and was elected to succeed Betty Friedan, becoming the second president of the organization in 1970. Her first presidential action was to lead the Women’s Strike for Equality, which took place Aug. 26, 1970.
“She was attacking the problem on the grand scale,” said Davis. “She was standing up for women, and she was standing up for women who were black.”
According to Clarke, Ms. Hernandez moved to San Francisco in the 1970s, bought a pair of flats in the Outer Richmond and opened her own consulting firm, Hernandez and Associates, to take on racism and sexism in government and corporations nationwide.
The office was a storefront on Geary Boulevard, but the action was all over town, across the nation and in places as far-flung as Beijing.
“Aileen was well known because she was in the forefront, marching or standing with women and addressing issues not only related to women but to young people,” said Williams, who recalled meeting Ms. Hernandez at an action in the Bayview.
In 2008, Mayor Gavin Newsom named Ms. Hernandez chair of the African American OutMigration Task Force, to address the city’s shrinking black population. She reported her findings with her usual biting wit.
"We could paper the walls of this building with reports that have been made on this issue," she said. "This is a city that still has a problem with discrimination, and many of the things we are talking about are the result of discrimination. Every organization that has anything to do with eliminating discrimination has been underfunded, understaffed and under-recognized."
In recent years, Ms. Hernandez started to slip, according to Clarke. She had moved her consultancy onto the first floor of her building, and kept going. Her last speaking engagement was in 2013 in Memphis.
“When she was in her advocacy mode, she was powerful and forceful. But as an aunt she was very sweet and kind,” said Clarke.
Ms. Hernandez never remarried or had children, but never forgot where she came from.
“She was a big important person and was very private,” Clarke said. “But when I went into her house she had pictures of her family everywhere.”
Survivors include nephews Steven Clarke of Huntington Beach (Orange County) and Mark Clarke of Ottawa, and nieces Susan and Annie Clarke of Orange County.
The City Hall service is open to the public at noon Monday in the North Light Court. The keynote speaker is Gloria Steinem.