Social Justice Advocate
Wilma Dykeman Legacy features Rob Thomas.
The Wilma Dykeman Legacy clarifies and promotes environmental and social justice through the written and spoken word.
From now until September 2023, the Wilma Dykeman Legacy will feature the life story of Rob Thomas, Executive Director of the Racial Justice Coalition, told in six installments.
The Racial Justice Coalition (RJC) is a broad-based alliance of individuals and organizations committed to addressing systemic racism and state-sanctioned violence against Black people and those most impacted by poverty, criminalization, and mass incarceration.
Through grassroots-led organizing and community collaborations, the RJC seeks to achieve and sustain deep equity by building power to those historically underrepresented, dismantling policies and institutions that uphold racism, and reimagining a community where justice exists for all people.
From her childhood home in a mountain cove just north of Asheville, Wilma Dykeman connected to the world through books and reading aloud with her parents. She grew into an excellent writer and world-class speaker, using both modes to strengthen and broadcast her messages.
Wilma Dykeman was a feminist who wrote under her maiden name, an early civil rights advocate in the South, and an Appalachian scholar and activist who lifted up mountain people. The Wilma Dykeman Legacy works to dismantle racial and class inequities, which are strangling our country.
The Wilma Dykeman Legacy was founded as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization in 2012 to honor Wilma Dykeman’s extraordinary life, and to sustain her core values of environmental integrity, social justice, and the power of the written and spoken word.
To learn more about the Racial Justice Coalition, please visit www.rjcavl.org. For more information about The Wilma Dykeman Legacy, please visit www.wilmadykemanlegacy.org.
