HONORING...
Kay Tillow
Labor Organizer and Civil Rights Activist
Kay Tillow has spent decades organizing at the intersection of labor and civil rights. Born in Paducah and raised in Metropolis, IL, Kay got her start in the student movement of the 1960s, joining the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1963 and the NAACP during college. She marched for civil rights, met W.E.B. Du Bois in Ghana, and never looked back. In the decades since, she has organized with the United Electrical Workers (UE), Local 1199, and the Machinists—fighting economic injustice hand-in-hand with the labor movement.
Today, Kay serves as Director of Organization of the Nurses Professional Organization (NPO) in Louisville, where she and others have spent decades trying to unionize nurses at Norton Healthcare, Kentucky’s largest health care system. Despite repeated rulings in their favor by the National Labor Relations Board and a bargaining order by an Administrative Law Judge, Norton refused to recognize the union.
Kay is also the chair of Kentuckians for Single Payer Health Care and a longtime advocate for Improved Medicare for All. She’s a founding member of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, a former board member of Healthcare-NOW!, and a committed leader in groups like the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Kentucky Alliance for Retired Americans. She currently serves as the Trustee for the Greater Louisville Central Labor Council, GLCLC.
