Mother Wright

Mary Ann Wright (July 11, 1921 - May 7, 2009), known as Mother Wright, was an humanitarian activist living and working in Oakland, California. She was born into a Roman Catholic African-American family in New Orleans and raised in the small town of Darlington, Louisiana. In 1950 she left her husband and moved to California with her nine children. She worked two jobs to support her family. In 1963 she decided to help feed poor people after, she said, she received a vision in a dream. She started out by serving one meal a week, paid for from her Social Security income. With help from others this effort grew to become the Mother Mary Ann Wright Foundation, which feeds more than 450 people a day on a budget of $137,000 a year.^[1]