The Free Press will honor Sandy Bolzenius with our 2018 "Libby" award for community activism at the Free Press Awards ceremony on Monday, October 8 at Woodlands Tavern, 1200 W. Third Ave. She is involved in grassroots efforts dedicated to creating genuine democracies beginning at the local level. To this end, she is most active with Move to Amend and the Columbus Community Bill of Rights, movements that put the rights of people and nature before those of corporations. An army veteran and a former international teacher, she has lived in and traveled through Europe, Africa, and Asia. During occasional pauses in her foreign forays, Sandy returned to Columbus to earn a bachelor’s degree in Education and a doctorate in History at Ohio State University, where she specialized in Gender and African American studies. Sandy is also the author of Glory in Their Spirit: How Four Black Women Took on the Army during World War II (University of Illinois Press, 2018). Interested in the dynamics of gender, race, class, and public policies, Sandy seeks to address the root causes and effects of social inequities and work collectively toward a fully inclusive and just society for all.
