Ruth Ellis

Ruth Charlotte Ellis (July 23, 1899 – October 5, 2000) was an African-American woman known for being an LGBT rights activist and the oldest surviving open lesbian at the age of 101. Her life is celebrated in Yvonne Welbon's documentary film Living With Pride: Ruth C. Ellis @ 100. Early life Ellis was born in Springfield, Illinois, on July 23, 1899. She was the youngest of four children in the family and the only daughter. Her parents were born in the last years of slavery in Tennessee. Ellis' mother, Carrie Farro Ellis, died when she was a teen, while her father, Charles Ellis Sr., was the first African American mail carrier in Illinois. Ellis became open about her identity as a lesbian around 1915, but claims to never have had to come out, as her family was accepting. She graduated from Springfield High School in 1919, at a time when fewer than seven percent of African Americans graduated from secondary school. In the 1920s, she met the only woman she ever lived with, Ceciline "Babe" Franklin. They moved together to Detroit, Michigan, in 1937. Career Ellis spent her days working for a printing company, but moved to Detroit in 1937 to babysit a young boy in Highland Park. Encouraged by the promise of better wages, she worked for $7.00 a week, which amounts to $125.62 today. However, she soon put the knowledge she had of the printing press, which she had picked up in Springfield, to work and secure a position with Waterfield and Heath, where she worked until opening her own press out of the West Side home she shared with Franklin. Her printing business, the Ellis & Franklin Printing Co., was the first woman-owned printing shop in the state of Michigan.