| Ruth Apilado | |
| Birth Name: | Ruth Mosselle Mays |
| Birth Date: | 30 April 1908 |
| Birth Place: | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Death Date: | (aged) |
| Death Place: | Federal Way, Washington, U.S. |
| Education: | Chicago State University |
| Known For: | Founder of America Intercultural Magazine |
| Spouse: | Inosencio Apilado |
| Children: | 1 |
| Relatives: | Lu Palmer (second cousin) |
Ruth Moselle Apilado (née Mays; April 30, 1908 – August 15, 2021) was an American newspaper editor, novelist, anti-racism campaigner for African American civil rights, magazine founder, teacher, and supercentenarian who founded America's Intercultural Magazine (AIM). Born during the Jim Crow era, she was an African American anti-racism activist for civil and political rights.[1]
Apilado was born on April 30, 1908, in Chicago, Illinois. Her parents were Stewart and Clara (née Whetsel) Mays.[2] Her maternal grandmother had emigrated from Canada to Ohio, and was partly indigenous. Her paternal great-grandfather was a slave owner in Virginia.[3] Apilado attended McKinley High School, which closed in 1954.[3] She became a teacher in 1928, after graduating from Chicago Normal College (now Chicago State University).[4]
She began her journalistic career in 1942, when she briefly worked as an editor for the newly created Negro Youth Photo Scripts Magazine.[5] In 1945, she wrote a letter to the editor expressing her criticism of Richard Wright's memoir Black Boy, stating that it was an inaccurate depiction of the typical childhood of African-Americans.[6] In 1950, Apilado published a novel called The Joneses, which was about the hardships of a black family living in Chicago.[7]
After retiring from teaching in 1973, Apilado founded America's Intercultural Magazine (AIM), a quarterly-published journal that set out to "bridge the gap between races, cultures, and religions."[8] Already in 1948, an initiative of creating such a journal (called Freedom Press) took place, when she requested the newspaper Berkeley Daily Gazette to assist her and her associates with marketing.[9] Her anti-racism stance was reflected in the editorials that she wrote; for example, she praised the activist and church leader Willa Saunders Jones in 1975.[10] On June 16, 1990, she participated as a panelist at a writers' conference in Elgin Community College in Illinois.[11]
Apilado's husband was Filipino-American Inosencio Apilado. Their son, Myron Apilado, was the vice-president of minority affairs at University of Washington until the year 2000, as well as an editor of AIM.[12] On August 26, 2004, at age 96, she was interviewed by Larry Crowe of The History Makers, a project that produces oral history material by African-Americans.[2] Her second cousin was the reporter, newspaper journalist and radio host Lu Palmer.[3] She turned 113 years old in April 2021[13] and died on 15 August later that year.[14]