Summary: | Pianist Lillie Benning Dickerson was born on June 12, 1902, in the 1100 block of Fitzwater Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Julia Capps Benning, and father, George Edward Benning, bought the house on Fitzwater Street in 1910 where Dickerson lived into her adulthood. She attended Pollack Elementary School and graduated from South Philadelphia High School in 1920. As a teenager, Dickerson was a piano accompanist for Marian Anderson. She was friends with Paul Robeson's sister, Marion, as well as the songwriter Oscar Hammerstein II. During World War II, Dickerson and other black women were hired by the U.S. Postal Service; due to unequal pay and unfair treatment, Dickerson wrote an appeal to Eleanor Roosevelt on behalf of her colleagues. When she was one hundred years old, she was the oldest gardener to participate in the award-winning 2120-2124 Fitzwater Street Garden Project. Dickerson passed away on August 12, 2010 at age 108.
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