Johnnie Tillmon, born on this day in 1926, was a welfare rights activist who founded Aid to Needy Children Mothers Anonymous (ANC) and served as executive director of the National Welfare Rights Organization in 1972.

In 1963, Tillmon became ill and was encouraged to begin receiving welfare, having six children to feed as a single mother. Seeing how people on welfare were treated, she organized those on welfare in the housing project, and in 1963, she founded the ANC, which was one of the first grassroots welfare mothers' organizations in the country.

This organization later became part of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), with Tillmon becoming the first chair of the NWRO. In 1972, she became its executive director when George Wiley resigned. Wiley had been trying to mobilize the working poor, whereas Tillmon tried to align with the feminist movement.

Tillmon's 1972 essay, "Welfare Is a Woman's Issue", which was published in the women's magazine "Ms.", emphasized women's right to adequate income, regardless of whether they worked in a factory or at home raising children. The National Union of the Homeless used what was called a "Johnnie Tillmon model" of organizing, named after her.

"For a lot of middle-class women in this country, Women's Liberation is a matter of concern. For women on welfare, it's a matter of survival."

- Johnnie Tillmon