M.A.M.A.'s Club Interview and Book signing with Dr.Zoharah

Book Summary:

Zoharah and Michael Simmons met in Atlanta in 1965, serving as student activists, and they soon transformed politically, becoming Black Power activists. As ethnic studies scholar Berger writes, that stance “is the bridge connecting the twentieth-century battles against Jim Crow to the ongoing fights against war, racism, patriarchy, and capitalism,” and to have these long-term participants as witnesses affords a further bridge between past and present. Zoharah and Michael, writes Berger, went from organization to organization as the Black Power movement evolved, working with and alongside the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Nation of Islam, the Black Panthers, and Black Lives Matter. Early on, both acquired an awareness of “Black consciousness” that joined Black America to “Third World” peoples and their struggles around the world. Michael became a representative for the American Friends Service Committee, traveling the world to study democratization movements. While observing the status of residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, he became aware “that people were being treated worse than Black people,” and he extended the aims of the civil rights struggle. Zoharah, meanwhile, engaged in anti-drug activism and worked to establish a Freedom School to “empower kids to make positive decisions.”Both personal and with a big-picture view—a welcome contribution to the literature of the civil rights movement.There were as many defeats as victories on those institutional fronts. As Berger notes, even some of the devout Quakers of the AFSC seemed taken aback that Michael became the organization’s Director of European Programs, and he was soon laid off along with “troublemakers of Michael’s generation and temperament.” Now in their 70s, both continue to follow an activist path, with Michael proclaiming that he “still enjoyed, as he put it, being a pain in somebody’s ass.”

Bios:

Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, Ph.D. is a retired Professor Emerita in African American and Religious Studies and affiliated Faculty in Women Studies at the University of Florida. She obtained her BA from Antioch University in Human Service, her MA in Religious Studies & her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa. Simmons became active in the Civil Rights Movement during her freshman year at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1962. She became a SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) field secretary two years later in the summer of 1964 when she joined hundreds of other college age volunteers who traveled to Mississippi to work in the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. She was assigned to Laurel, Mississippi where she became one of three women Project Directors in the State, working there for a total of 18 months. After leaving Mississippi, Simmons worked in the NY Office of SNCC organizing High School and College Friends of SNCC groups. Her stint in NY was cut short when Julian Bond was denied his duly elected seat in the Georgia State Legislature to help organize the Julian Bond Re-election Campaign in his legislative district. After Bond's Re-election, Simmons and a group of those who had worked on his campaign formed the Atlanta Project of SNCC, which became the organization’s first major Southern urban project. It was in the Atlanta Project that the foundation for the Black Power thrust in SNCC was laid when the group wrote a Position Paper on Black Power that would later be published in the NY Times and labeled as "SNCC's Black Power Manifesto." Since her years with SNCC, Simmons has served as an organizer with the National Council of Negro Women, serving as their Mid-West Field Director for their Project Woman Power and later with the American Friends Service Committee, where she held a number of program and administrative jobs for over 20 years. She returned to college in the late 80s to resume the college education she had left behind to work full time in the Movement, completing her academic studies in 2002. Simmons primary academic focus was on Islamic Law and its impact on Muslim women. She conducted research for two years as a Fulbright and NMERTA scholar in Jordan, Egypt, Palestine and Syria (1996-1998) on the Shari’ah’s impact on women, contemporarily and the women’s movements in those countries to change these laws. She taught Courses on Islam, Women and Islam, Modern Islamic Thought, Islam in American, African American Religious Traditions and Race Religion and Rebellion. Additionally, she taught Courses on the Civil Rights Movement, on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X among other African American Studies topics. Simmons is a prolific public Speaker on College and University Campuses as well as in Community Forums. She is featured in several films on the Civil Rights Movement and on Women & Islam. Additionally, she has written numerous articles and essays on the Civil Rights Movement and on Women & Islam.

Dr. Hazel Levy is an instructor of genetics and a graduate student in higher education administration. Dr. Levy's current research interests include the history of eugenics and its influence on higher education, the desegregation of academic faculty in public universities, and the influence of past residential segregation policies on current access to broadband and online learning opportunities.

Dr. Vincent Edward Oluwole Adejumo is currently a Senior Lecturer of African American Studies and affiliate Senior Lecturer of Political Science at the University of Florida as well as the founder of the Olu Institute of Learning Inc. He is from Tampa Fl and is a 2008 graduate of the Florida State University, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration, triple majoring in Business Management, Management Information Systems, and Human Resource Management.

In the Summer of 2015, Dr. Adejumo graduated from the University of Florida’s Political Science PhD program majoring in policy and administration. He currently teaches Intro to African American Studies, The Wire, Mentoring At-Risk Youth, Black Wall Street, and Black Masculinity.

Due to his continued involvement and reputation for teaching at the University of Florida, Dr. Adejumo was selected as the Professor of the Year by the UF Black Student Union for the 2015-2016 school year. He was also selected as the Professor and Advisor of the Year by the UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for the 2017-2018 school year.

Kevin Bird, Ph.D., serves as the Center's Experiential Learning Coordinator and Lecturer with the UF Bob Graham Center. He has a doctorate in history from UF with a focus on the American South.

He tracks community-based struggles from Reconstruction to the late 20th century to “establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty,” as set forth in the U.S. Constitution. African Americans led the pursuit for these ideals beginning in the 1860s in the deep southern contexts in which Dr. Bird grew up, southwest Mississippi and southeast Louisiana. What Dr. Bird has termed as the McComb Organizing Model (MCOM) became the dominant methodology used by African Americans and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizers in what developed into the largest expansion of democracy in the history of the United States.

Dr. Gillis was born in Gainesville, Florida where she studied Speech and Diction Theory, and majored in the Performing Arts at the University of Florida. She relocated to South Florida in 1976, became a Bible Student, and entered ministry in 1983. In 1997 Dr. Gillis was conferred 2 Doctoral Degrees (Humane Letters and Theology); she has earned an AA in Theology, Bachelor’s in Christian Ed, Master’s in Christian Counseling, and Master/Teacher Certification in Emotional Literacy for Relationships. Yet, she affirms her greatest accomplishments in life are her sons, Josh and Derrick. In the office of Pastor, It has been said of Dr. Gillis: “She paints a picture with the Word of God”. Anointed and filled with the Holy Spirit, her ministry proclaims truth in a very special and unique way. When she teaches, bible passages come alive! The listener can relate to every joy, sorrow, strength, weakness, and triumph! Pastor Lena is also an anointed vocal musician who knows how to usher people in the presence of the Lord. Her music gives glory and honor to God and has been instrumental in bringing hope and healing to the hurting.

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