Margaret Prescod

Margaret Prescod is an activist, author, journalist and radio host. She was a founder of The Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Murders and of Black Women for Wages for Housework. Prescod is on the executive board of the Center for the Study of Racism, Social Justice & Health, at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health.

Early life and education Prescod was born in Barbados and emigrated to the United States in 1962 as a teenager. Within her first two weeks of moving to the United States she was on a picket line, protesting against a medical centre in Brooklyn that would not employ Black people. In 1980, she wrote Black Women: Bringing it All Back Home, the first book that explored the relationship between women, immigration and race. In 1985, she moved to Los Angeles, where she became involved with the Utility Workers Union of America. The organisation wound down in the mid-1990s, but was restarted in 2008 when the serial killer returned. In 2014 her efforts were turned into a film by HBO, Tales of the Grim Sleeper, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

She is presently the host and executive producer of the Sojourner Truth radio show which is broadcast by KPFK and syndicated by radio stations WPFW (Washington DC) and WBAI in New York City, named after the abolitionist and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth.

Personal life Her daughter, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, is a cosmologist, science writer and equality activist.

Selected publications