Willie Mae Young Hart (1915–2017) was an American nurse and civil rights activist in Portland, Oregon.[1]
Willie Mae Young Hart was born on April 4, 1915, in the town of Vicksburg, Mississippi.[2] She was married to Theodore R. Hart.[2]
Hart attended Saint Mary's Catholic high school and began training to become a nurse.[1][3] She moved to Coos Bay Oregon in 1939 (formally known as Marshfield) and then to Portland.[1] She left Mississippi in the late 1930s after her first child, a son was born.[4] She said fear of violence against black men in the South prompted her decision to move.[4]
Willie Mae Young Hart helped start Portland's first Black-owned cab company with her friend Carlos Martin and husband Theodore Hart.[1] She also helped found the Portland Chapter of the National Council of Negro Women and Women In Community Services (WICS).[1]
In 2010 at the age of ninety-four she was still active in the community and working for social justice.[2]
Willie Mae Young Hart died June 24, 2017, at aged 102.[1]