Ross, Loretta

Inspiration Born Out of Violence

Born Loretta June Ross on August 16, 1953, in Temple, Texas, she was the sixth child in a blended family of eight children. Ross's mother, a former record store owner with five children from a previous marriage, worked as a domestic during Ross's early childhood. Her father, a Jamaican immigrant, was an Army drill sergeant. The family moved frequently and often lived in base housing to accommodate her father's career. Ross cites the insularity of a military culture structured on the hierarchy of rank over race for shielding her from the overt racism prevalent during the segregation era. However, two violent events would mar her early life and have a profound impact on both her consciousness and future plans. One, a rape at age 11 by a stranger, and the other, incest by a relative at age 15, which resulted in pregnancy. The rape would go unreported, and in April 1969, Ross gave birth to a son, Howard Michael. The pregnancy had other implications, among them the loss of a scholarship to Radcliffe, and confinement in a home for unwed mothers for several months.

Undeterred by her status as a single [Page 1085]mother, however, she applied to Howard University. As a student at Howard, she was active in Black Nationalist politics, cofounding the National Black United Front (NBUF), and becoming active in the tenants rights movement. The murder of a friend during a street robbery, political activist Yulanda Ward, was a turning point for Ross, but it was her sterilization following an emergency hysterectomy at the age of 23 that focused her activism on the issue of reproductive rights for women of color. In 1976, she was the first black woman to file suit against A.H. Robins, the manufacturer of the Dalkon Shield, a contraceptive intrauterine device responsible for the infection that led to her sterilization. Ross's lawsuit opened the floodgates for a class-action suit by other women and the award of millions of dollars in compensation to the estimated 2.8 million Dalkon shield users.

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