Sally Rowley | |
---|---|
Born | Sara Jane Rowley October 20, 1931
Trenton, New Jersey, U.S. |
Died | May 14, 2020
Tucson, Arizona, U.S. | (aged 88)
Alma mater | Stephens College |
Occupation(s) | Civil rights advocate, aircraft pilot, flight attendant, secretary, jeweler, hawker |
Employer | American Airlines |
Sara Jane "Sally" Rowley (October 20, 1931 – May 14, 2020) was an American jewelry-maker and civil rights activist. [1]
Rowley was born in Trenton, New Jersey, [2] the daughter of Emos Rowley and Sara Rowley. She graduated from Stephens College in Missouri. At Stephens, she learned to fly small planes and worked as a flight attendant for American Airlines after graduation. [1]
Rowley worked as a secretary in New York in the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1959, she was aboard a plane hijacked by Cuban gunmen. [3] She joined the Freedom Riders, who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States to challenge the non-enforcement of the Supreme Court's ruling that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. [4] She was arrested with other Freedom Riders by Jackson County police in July 1961. [5] [6] After serving time in Mississippi State Penitentiary she returned to New York, but later lived in Mexico, Guatemala, Hawaii, California, and New Mexico, making and selling her jewelry. [1]
Rowley's partner was artist Felix Pasilis; they never formally married, but lived and worked together from the 1960s until his death in 2018. They had children, Sofie and Oliver, and raised his daughter, Beatrice. [1]
She died from COVID-19 in May 2020, at age 88, after it swept through her Tucson, Arizona, nursing home amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Arizona. [1] Her granddaughter, Anika Pasilis, wrote an op-ed essay about attending Rowley's deathbed through a window at the nursing home. [7] [8]