Black History Month: Dorothy Shaw
Friday, News 25 spoke to a woman with an amazing list of accomplishments in leadership and service. Director of Community Relations for Ingalls Shipbuilding, Dorothy Shaw, says, “Yes, I’ve earned some accolades, but I think the most important thing I’ve done is to show all things are possible.”
Whether she acknowledges it or not, Shaw holds a number of achievements and years of leadership under her belt. With a mountain of odds against her, she was an unlikely candidate for success. Shaw also says, “My mother earned her G.E.D. when she 60 something, but she felt very strongly about education and she encouraged all of her children to get an education. I was the first one in my family to grad from high school, the first one to go to college.”
Growing up in small town Shubuta, MS, her family didn’t have much, so she escaped through books. Shaw also says, “Books that we brought from school, books that my mother had gathered from places she worked, but they were books. Seeing the words on the pages and visualizing myself doing some of those things that people in the books did, traveled, working in big cities.”
As she matured, Shaw discovered the most adventurous story she’d ever tell was that of her own, right here on the Coast, where she hasn’t just flourished as a community figure, but she’s also given back. Shaw says, “For me, it’s just my debt to society. It’s what I owed somebody. I wanted to do this to say to other people, particularly people in the African American community, that these things are possible.” For the soft, yet assertive woman, who has ripped down barriers, News 25 asked, what’s the next chapter in the life of Dorothy Shaw?
She closes, “I’ll continue to work with young people and maybe one day I’ll go home and sit on my porch and sit in the rocking chair and wave at people passing by.”
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