Lillie Petty, a longtime Chicago labor and community activist, passed away on February 22, 2022.
In 1984, Lillie Petty was a personal care attendant with the Illinois Department of Rehabilitation Services, when she was approached by a union organizer. She quickly became a member of Local 880, (now SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana), and became involved in an ultimately successful decades-long fight to gain collective bargaining rights for home care workers.
As a board member of the now-defunct ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), Ms. Petty fought against discriminatory policies of some insurance companies, citing in her congressional testimony in 1993 an ACORN study that revealed such discrimination against Black neighborhoods. The previous year she campaigned to push Avondale Bank to adopt more favorable lending practices in the Black community, and negotiated a lending agreement with the Bank.
According to the Chicago Defender Digital Daily, homecare workers today have increased wages, health insurance, and other benefits, at least in part, because of Lillie Petty’s activism.
Lillie Petty will long be remembered by her union, as well as her surviving family members, as having lived her life advocating for social justice for communities and workers who too often were underserved and underrepresented.