A few dozen friends and family members of community activist Gloria Thomas joined residents of University Heights for a street co-naming ceremony in her honor at the northeast corner of West 190th Street and Aqueduct Avenue on Monday, July 13. The street was co-named Ms. Gloria Thomas Way.

 

According to those who knew her, Thomas was a long-time leader of her tenant association, of the AquaUni190 Neighborhood Association, and had tirelessly advocated for residents along Aqueduct Avenue, University Avenue, and 190th Street. She was also a former member of the 52nd Precinct Community Council, and a member of Our Bronx, formerly Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition. Thomas died on Monday, Oct. 9, 2023, at the age of 84.

Founded in 1974, Our Bronx unites diverse peoples and institutions to fight for racial justice and economic democracy through intergenerational community organizing to transform The Bronx and beyond, according to its website.

 

Before the unveiling, Alan Richardson told the crowd, “There are people who simply live in a community, and then there are those who become the heart of it. Ms. Gloria Thomas was the heart of Aqueduct Avenue and the love pillar of The Bronx.”

 

According to Richardson, Thomas was born in Manhattan on Jan. 1, 1939, amid World War II, and was raised in Harlem with her six siblings. She moved to The Bronx in 1963, where she attended Bronx Community College in University Heights. There, she studied nursing and spent 12 years as a nurse at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx before taking a job as a supervisor at the NYC Parks department. He said she later worked at New York City Department of Social Services.

Richardson credited Thomas with helping bring the Police Athletic League’s Play Street’s Summer Program to Aqueduct Avenue, helping to organize a yearly block party, and personally funding an annual back-to-school giveaway. He said Thomas also led a fight against a landlord that led to the creation of the Proactive Preservation Initiative (PPI), a program that identifies at-risk families and properties run by the NYC Department of Housing, Preservation & Development (HPD). The latter provides rehabilitation loans and enforces housing laws.

 

“Long before community organizing became her life’s work, Ms. Gloria embraced service through activism as a member of the Black Panther Party, where she strengthened her lifelong commitment to justice (and) self-determination,” Richardson said.

For her part, City Councilmember Pierina Sanchez (C.D. 14) later said of Thomas, “The truth is from her day-to-day life as a nurse at Lincoln, to her work as a social worker, helping people right at the moment of crisis to get those food stamps, to get that assistance that they need, to her many decades of work on this very block, throwing block parties, barbecues, backpack events to go back to school, we know that she is a member of our community that will be forever loved.”

 

According to Richardson, Thomas leaves behind five children, 13 grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren and three great-great-great grandchildren.