Tina Hobson - Part 1 - Interview 05-13-2013 - Final
Channel: Washington, D.C. Lessons of the Sixties
Date: 2019-08-20

An environmental and clean energy activist, Tina Hobson spent many years in various government posts in which she promoted civil rights, improved equal opportunities for women in the federal government, and worked with employment and training programs to assist the poor. During her interview for the Lessons of the 60s project, Tina spoke extensively about her late husband, Julius Hobson, the famed D.C. civil rights leader (and later D.C. Council member), whose leadership was most responsible for ending discrimination in hiring in local retail stores and in overturning racially discriminatory practices in the city's public schools. At Tina’s request, this interview focused mainly on her husband Julius Hobson and the 10 years of her life with him, and to a lesser extent on her activism and career: Interview topics include Julius Hobson (JH) growing up in Alabama; JH’s service in World War II; at Howard University; his Marxist philosophy and atheism; his early civic activism; as director of the D.C. chapter of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality); CORE’s activism under JH integrating the workforce at scores of retailers, utilities, etc., opening up some 5,000 jobs for African Americans; winning the landmark Hobson v. Hansen lawsuit to end the race- and class-biased track system in D.C. public schools; helping lead the fight against freeways through black neighborhoods and the very heart of the city; JH and Tina marriage and their married life together; difficulties of being a black-white couple in the late 1960s and 1970s; JH’s stunts to get press attention for serious issues; JH winning a seat on the  first D.C. elected school board; JH as a leading figure in the anti-Vietnam War movement; JH as a co-founder of the D.C. Statehood Party and leader in early statehood movement; JH winning a successful lawsuit against the federal government for discrimination against African American, Latino and women workers (Hanson v. Hampton); JH and Tina being targeted and spied on under the FBI’s COINTELPRO program; JH and Tina and other D.C.-based activists eventually winning a lawsuit against FBI agents for violation of their constitutional rights; JH as vice-presidential candidate on Dr. Benjamin Spock’s third-party presidential candidacy in 1972; Hobson afflicted with multiple myeloma (cancer of the spine); Hobson winning an at-large seat on the first elected D.C. Council; Tina as antiwar activist; difficulties with her federal job because of marriage to Julius; her work with Department of  Energy focusing on energy efficiency for home appliances, and on equality for women in the workplace.