Lillian Davis Roberts (born January 2, 1928) served from 2002 through 2014 as the executive director of

District Council 37 District Council 37 (Also known as DC37) is New York City's largest public sector employee union, representing over 150,000 members and 50,000 retirees. DC37 was chartered in 1944 by AFSCME to represent public employees in New York City. It wa ...

(DC37), the largest municipal

union Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Roberts was a nurse's aide, and was secretary of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

Hospital local when she was invited by

Victor Gotbaum Victor H. Gotbaum (September 5, 1921 – April 5, 2015) was an American labor leader. From 1965 to 1987, he was president of AFSCME District Council 37 (DC37), the largest municipal union in New York City. Biography Gotbaum was born in Brookly ...

to join his

AFSCME The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is the largest trade union of public employees in the United States. It represents 1.3 million public sector employees and retirees, including health care workers, correcti ...

union staff in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

in 1959. This began a professional relationship between Gotbaum and Roberts that lasted for decades. When Gotbaum became head of DC37, Roberts joined him in New York as a director of hospital field operations, and eventually became Associate Director in charge of organization. In 1969, she was jailed for two weeks for defying

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

Governor

Nelson Rockefeller Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (July 8, 1908 – January 26, 1979), sometimes referred to by his nickname Rocky, was an American businessman and politician who served as the 41st vice president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. A member of t ...

and leading a strike against three mental hospitals. In 1981, after events which decreased her power in DC37, she left the union and was appointed as New York State industrial commissioner, the first black woman to hold such a high post in New York. From 1987 to 1992, she was senior vice president of Total Health Systems, an

HMO In the United States, a health maintenance organization (HMO) is a medical insurance group that provides health services for a fixed annual fee. It is an organization that provides or arranges managed care for health insurance, self-funded heal ...

. DC37 was involved in a major scandal in the late 1990s, and Roberts' return to DC37 as executive director in 2002 was seen, as noted in Roberts' words, as a return to that "old time religion". She retired at the end of 2014 and was succeeded by her associate Henry Garrido.

References

External links

Photos and Archives related to Lillian Roberts.
Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs. Wayne State University. * Lillian Roberts at

CUNY Graduate Center The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and post-graduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the Ci ...

Activist Women's Voices The Activist Women's Voices collection is an oral history project of 35 women activists who worked in community-based organizations in the New York City area. The project covers the period from 1995 to 2000 and was a project of The City University ...

oral history project �
finding aid
1928 births Living people University of Chicago staff American trade union leaders People from Chicago African-American activists Delta Sigma Theta members Activist Women's Voices oral history project Activists from New York City American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees people 20th-century African-American women 21st-century African-American people 21st-century African-American women {{US-activist-stub