Eleanor Josaitis
American activist
Eleanor Mary Josaitis (née Reed; December 17, 1931 – August 9, 2011) was an American civil rights activist and the co-founder of Focus: HOPE, an organization fighting racism and poverty. Michigan governor Rick Snyder referred to her as a "tireless and devoted leader".
Work
Having become involved in civil rights after hearing about the violence directed towards civil rights activists in Alabama, Josaitis co-founded Focus: HOPE a year after the 1967 Detroit riot and served as its associate director for many years. Upon the executive director Fr William Cunningham's death in 1997, she succeeded him and later became the CEO.
She also provided leadership and advocacy for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program and made important contributions to public awareness of hunger and malnutrition. Working with co-founder Cunningham, she helped develop Centers of Opportunity education and training programs to help primarily underrepresented minorities gain access to jobs and careers. She served on numerous board and committees, including The National Workforce Alliance Board, the Michigan Council for Labor and Economic Growth, and the advisory board for the Arab-American and Chaldean Council. In 2002 she was named one of the most influential women in Detroit by Crain's Detroit Business.
In 2006, she turned over the day-to-day operation to a new leadership team in order to focus her efforts on fundraising. She died of peritoneal cancer on August 9, 2011, in Livonia, Michigan.
Legacy
Josaitis was widely known and respected throughout Metro Detroit for her work in the community, and had been referred to as "Detroit's Mother Theresa" before her death.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5354304. VIAF identifies the subject as 14146635594441981953. The Library of Congress control number is no2016076901. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931, 2011, 1967 and 1997.
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