The Anti-Defamation League’s Mountain States Office announced today that it will present its 2012 Civil Rights Awards to Hon. Wilma Webb, former Colorado Representative and Denver First Lady, and Bobbie Towbin, former ADL Senior Regional Associate Director, at a reception on February 16, 2012. “Both Wilma Webb and Bobbie Towbin spent their careers working for civil rights and respect for all people,” said ADL Regional Director Scott L. Levin. “It is a privilege to be able to acknowledge their decades of work with ADL’s prestigious Civil Rights Awards.”
Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock will present the Civil Rights Award to Wilma Webb. Rep. Webb served in the Colorado General Assembly from 1980 to 1993, where she was the first African-American member of the Joint Budget Committee. She led the fight to establish a state holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and she was the moving force behind Denver’s annual Marade, the country’s largest march and rally commemorating Dr. King and his ideals of equality, respect and freedom. She served as Denver’s First Lady from 1991 to 2003, during her husband Wellington’s three terms as Mayor.
Former ADL Regional Director Saul Rosenthal will present the Civil Rights Award to Bobbie Towbin, who worked tirelessly for civil rights and religious freedom as Mountain States Regional Senior Associate Director of the Anti-Defamation league from 1987 until her retirement in 2002. She fought for equal treatment for all, advocated for state hate crimes laws, stood up against extremists, and worked to preserve the separation of church and state, fulfilling ADL’s mission “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people…to secure justice and fair treatment to all.”
The Mountain States Office of the Anti-Defamation League has presented Civil Rights Awards to forty-eight civil rights leaders in Colorado since 1982.
ADL’s Civil Rights Committee, co-chaired by Candace Cole Figa, Craig Fleishman and John Plotkin, chose this year’s recipients. For information on attending the Civil Rights Awards Reception on February 16, please call 303-830-7177, extension 210.