Eddie Mae Binion inspires the next generation of activists
By Meliqueica Meadows Of the St. Louis American
As a low-income mother of eight, Eddie Mae Binion decided she simply wouldn’t accept the poor treatment from social workers whom she and her former Darst-Webbe Housing Project neighbors deemed “midnight riders.”
“The case workers would come late at night and look all under your beds,” she said. “They didn’t want you to have no TV or no telephone because that’s a luxury.”
But she said the day a social worker started looking through her cabinets was the last straw.
Binion said, “The straw that broke the camel’s back is when they went in my medicine cabinet and said I didn’t need medicine and started throwing it away.”
It was then she then went to the other women on public assistance in her housing project and said “let’s organize.”
What Binion organized, over 42 years ago, was the South Side Welfare Rights Organization, an organization that still survives today. Binion also founded the South Side Welfare Rights Education Association and the support group, Parents and Grandparents of Drug Abusers.
Buoyed by her supporters, Binion led protests and demonstrations throughout the city demanding fair treatment of low-income residents. Through her activism she linked with Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. She has been a member of the LSEM Board of Directors since 1981.
“We were doing a demonstration and some people from Legal Services were there,” Binion said. “We got acquainted and have been acquainted ever since.”
She said initially that the women in her neighborhood simply withstood the violation of their rights by city social workers in exchange for the meager welfare subsidies they received.
“I said that they’ll only do what you let them do. It takes people like us to bring it to their attention,” Binion said.
With that, Binion resolved to make the city understand what it was like to be a poor mother on public assistance and that just because a woman needed a hand up it did not mean that her human rights should be violated.
Now some of her biggest adversaries, like the City Department of Human Services, have become allies in the fight to ensure a decent quality of life for low-income residents.
“We been in the storm a long time,” she said of her organization. “But what happened after all that fighting was they started working with us. The last conference I had, Bill Siedhoff (director of the City Department of Human Services) was my keynote speaker.”
Binion’s activism has inspired two generations of human rights activists. Her eight children – including community activist and sportscaster Demetrius Johnson – and now her grandchildren are following in her footsteps.
Binion’s granddaughter, Lakista “Pinky” Hunter, is currently employed with Legal Services of Eastern Missouri and said she remembers the first welfare rights rally she attended.
“I was eight or nine and we were marching with signs saying ‘I want a j-o-b so I can e-a-t,’” she recalled.
In her current position, Hunter works with Medicaid, TANF and disabled and elderly clients. She said she did not tell her grandmother she was applying for the job “because I wanted to do it myself.”
“She always says I’m stepping into her shoes and taking over,” Hunter said. “But those are some very big shoes and I don’t know if I’m qualified.”
Her grandmother has helped countless residents through her service on the Federal EBT Task Force, The Missouri Medicaid Board, The Board For Legal Services of Eastern Missouri and The Board Governors Committee for Reconfiguration, Statewide Reconfiguration Committee for Missouri’s Legal Service.
Binion has received numerous accolades for her activism including the Danforth Leadership Program Award in 1977, the Citizen Award from the Human Development Corporation in 1980, the Woman of the Year from YMCA in 1984 and the Advocate of the Year Award from the Missouri Association for Social Welfare in 1996. She was enshrined on the LSEM Wall of Justice in 2005.
She said the legacy she would like to leave for the next generation, particularly young, low-income mothers, is to develop the fortitude to champion policies that will ensure that the future of their children is secure.
“I want all the women who are benefiting from these services to wake up and smell the coffee, ‘cause it’s sure brewing,” she said. “Stop thinking you can’t make a difference because you can make a difference.”
But, Binion cautioned, “you can’t do nothing sitting in the house. You got to get up and get involved.”