Ruth J. Simmons grew up without running water or electricity. She became the president of Smith College, Brown University and Prairie View A&M.
Here was a true case of “It takes a village.” For Ruth Jean, support came not only from caring family members and dear friends, but from extraordinary teachers who saw in her the potential to become a scholar, a shining star. Those teachers convinced her “that learning was supremely important, thoroughly enjoyable, and immensely expansive.”
Her first-grade teacher in Grapeland, Ida Mae Henderson, was the first one who really “saw me,” Simmons says — saw beyond her “thick, unstraightened plaits; large, bulging eyes; a homemade, ill-fitting dress; and the odor of the bacon fat my mother had smeared on my legs to treat my ashy skin.” Ruth Jean “could not understand how such a magnificent person could heap praise on me, an ugly country girl!”But praise her, she did.
After an academic career that carried her from vice provost at Princeton to president of Smith and then president of Brown, “I had no intention of taking on another job,” Simmons says. But five years later, when Prairie View A&M came calling, she felt called to use her talents on behalf of HBCU students “who deserve an education, just like my students at Brown.
As the university’s eighth president, Ruth Simmons brought her own game to recruit more funding and scholarships before stepping down earlier this year. She now lives in Houston, where she is a President’s Distinguished Fellow at Rice University. For, despite all her years away, “Texas is home for me,” Simmons says. “And I’m beginning to learn that I’ll never be done. I’ll always be involved in a positive way.
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