Gwendolyn zoharah simmons biography of michael
Gwendolyn zoharah simmons biography of michael w!
Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons was raised in a Baptist family in Memphis. She arrived in Atlanta in to attend college at the very beginning of the sit-in movement.
Gwendolyn zoharah simmons biography of michael
Her parents had warned her not to get involved, lest she lose her scholarship, and for a while she followed their advice. When Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activists approached her for help, she began to feel guilty about her lack of involvement and decided to work with them.
She avoided the cameras and arrests at first, but soon decided to join her friends in song as they were being dragged away by the police. This was the start of a life of, as she said it, putting communal goals before individual goals.
As part of the Freedom Summer of , Simmons helped build freedom schools and libraries in black communities in Mississippi.
Overall, she spent seven years working full time on voter registration and desegregation activities in Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama during the height of the civil rights