Cindy Judd Hill

Dorothy I. "Cindy" Judd Hill (March 5, 1926 – March 2, 2019) was an American feminist and pageant winner. She was working as a music teacher when she was dismissed for being pregnant while on a sabbatical year and sued her school district, alleging that she had faced employment discrimination. Her case went to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and was successful, which began her focus on women's rights activism. She was a founding member of the Greater Pittsburgh Area and the South Hills chapters of the National Organization for Women and was actively involved in the campaign to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. After retiring in 1984, she began to compete in senior beauty pageants and was crowned Ms. National Senior Citizen in 1993.

Early life Hill was born on March 5, 1926. She grew up in Duquesne, Pennsylvania. She had two siblings, Myrtle and Raymond "Bud". As a child, she took tap dancing lessons organized through the Works Progress Administration and planned to become a dancer and singer. While in high school, she was nicknamed "Gams" by a classmate. In 1944, she graduated from Duquesne High School and began studying at Westminster College, where she graduated in 1947 with a bachelor's degree in music education. She met John "Jack" Hill when she was fourteen. When he returned from fighting in World War II, the couple married in April 1945. He proposed to her multiple times in letters until she agreed to marry him. The couple moved to Thornburg, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, where her husband worked as a civil engineer. She was a housewife until 1956 when she decided to go to work. The school district required teachers to inform them of a pregnancy within four months and take unpaid maternity leave for a year. She filed a lawsuit against the Chartiers Valley School District, relying on the federal equal employment opportunity legislation outlawing employment discrimination. The case received front-page coverage from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Hill addressed the national conference of NOW, receiving support both locally and nationally. In August 1968, Judge Benjamin Lencher ruled that she should be reinstated. The school district appealed the decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but in November 1968, the court refused to hear the appeal, and the lower court's decision was left to stand. Hill was awarded backpay of $14,000, although she spent more than $20,000 on the lawsuit. She had been persuaded by Betty Friedan to attend the first meeting in Washington, D.C., where she told the nascent organization about her lawsuit. She then was recruited by Wilma Scott Heide to become one of the founding members of the Pittsburgh chapter of NOW in November 1967, along with Charlotte Coe, Ruth Heimbuecher, Anita Fine, Dan Fine, Anne Mast, Bob Mast, Daryl Bem, Sandy Bem, Ann Heuer and Virginia Harrington. As the public relations director of the chapter in 1968, she changed the name to the Greater Pittsburgh Area chapter and two years later, she helped create a 12-hour talk show for the local radio show WJAS featuring feminist speakers. She later served as vice president of the chapter. Hill was also an executive board member of Pennsylvania NOW.

Hill became actively involved in the campaign to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), traveling the country to debate opponents of the amendment, including Phyllis Schlafly, and attending demonstrations during the 1960s in Washington, D.C. She published an article on the ERA in The Christian Science Monitor and was an ERA missionary in 1981 to promote the proposed amendment to Mormons in Salt Lake City, Utah. She took six months of unpaid leave from her job in 1982 to go to Chicago to convince the state legislature of Illinois to ratify the amendment, working as a volunteer at the ERA Countdown office.

Hill was also involved in a number of other causes, participating in marches and writing letters to the editor. In 1969, she was involved in picketing The Pittsburgh Press over its segregation of classified advertisements by sex. She attended the first national conference of NOW and attended every conference as a delegate until 1991. In her second pageant, she was the second runner-up. She was crowned as the winner of the Ms. National Senior Citizen pageant held in Joliet, Illinois, in October 1993. Following her success in the pageant, she was featured in a 1998 NOW cookbook.

She joined a performance troupe for performers over 55 years old at Robert Morris University, the RMC Independents, and began performing her own show "A Body of Song" at retirement homes and senior centers.

Death and legacy Hill died on March 2, 2019, at her retirement home in South Fayette, from complications due to dementia.