This is Democracy – Episode 249: Race & Opportunity in America

[00:00:00] Intro: This is Democracy. A podcast about the people of the United States. A podcast about citizenship. About engaging with politics and the world around you. A podcast about educating yourself on today’s important issues. And how to have a voice in what happens next.

[00:00:21] Jeremi: Welcome to our new episode of this is democracy Every one of our episodes each week is special But this one I really feel is a super special if I can say that because we have on not only someone whom zachary and I deeply respect but someone who really has now written a book that tells a story that I think is so moving and so relevant and so uplifting for our time.

And I can’t think of a moment in our recent history when we’ve needed an uplifting story more than today. We are going to talk today with Dr. Ruth Simmons, who has just published a fantastic book that I recommend to all of our listeners, Up Home, One Girl’s Journey. And it is quite the journey that Dr.

Simmons has had. She has been a pioneer in so many ways. She is the former president of Smith College. Then she was president of Brown University. And then after retiring from those two jobs, she came back to her native Texas and was the president at Prairie View A& M University, which is a historically black college and university, Texas’s oldest historically black college and university.

And as I was telling Dr. Simmons before we started the recording, I have a few students in Austin now who were students of hers, and they speak with her with a reverence that is rarely heard for university administrators and leaders. It’s really quite, quite extraordinary. As we’ll discuss, and as Dr.

Simmons describes in beautiful detail in her book, she did not start out in an elite position. She did not start out with privilege. Uh, she grew up in Grapeland, Texas, the child of sharecroppers. And Dr. Simmons was the 12th child of her parents and grew up in poverty that most of us have never experienced.

And it’s really quite an extraordinary story. Uh, Dr. Simmons, thank you for joining us today.

[00:02:15] Ruth: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[00:02:17] Jeremi: We will start, of course, with our scene setting poem from Mr. Zachary Suri. Uh, Zachary, what’s the title of your poem today? Well, it’s

[00:02:25] Zachary: one that’s very appropriate for fall.

If

[00:02:27] Jeremi: the leaves could speak. You’re just rubbing in the fact that you actually get a beautiful fall in New Haven. I am, yes.

[00:02:34] Zachary: Austin. Well, I’m going to be feeling the brunt of winter very soon. I think I have a right to rub it in for

[00:02:40] Jeremi: a few days. Fair enough, fair enough. Well, let’s hear your, let’s hear your poem, Zachary.

I

[00:02:45] Zachary: wonder sometimes if the leaves could speak What they would say of the glory they seek In learning to fly as they fall If we should ask of them all What right do you have to hope If each one would be able to state And not for a minute hesitate There is no reason or rhyme I hope only because I remember a time When hope was illegal And wonder a crime I hope sometimes for the world to freeze.

So I can ask of each hailstorm and autumn breeze. What keeps you alive in the frost and the swift answer Tossed. I keep going because I am going to keep the soil I plowed under my own two feet. The fruits of fields I’ve sown I shall reap. Wonderful. is the coldness of this, the steely eyed whisper that’s almost a kiss, that sees a truth that is most certainly true, but won’t let them rest without paying her due.

We are not eternal, but our hope can last, and heal our wounds, a wonderful cast. Hold still so the dreams will be real. Hold still so the children can hear, hold still so the gashes can

[00:04:02] Jeremi: heal. Wow, Zachary, you’re channeling your inner Walt Whitman today, huh? Perhaps. What’s your poem about?

[00:04:10] Zachary: My poem is about the power of hope and curiosity, even in circumstances that not only seem to leave no space for those, but seem to actively try to suppress and undermine hope and curiosity.

[00:04:24] Jeremi: Well, I think that’s a perfect place to turn to, uh, our distinguished guest, uh, Dr. Simmons. I was so moved by how you started your book in describing your experiences as a young child in what sound to me is circumstances that were almost impossible to learn and maybe circumstances where there was, there was reason not to have hope.

Can you describe for us how, how you grew up and how you managed to have hope in these difficult circumstances?

[00:04:52] Ruth: Well, first may may I just say how much I enjoyed Zachary’s poem and I even took note of some phrases that I want to hold on to for a while. Thank you, Zachary. Thank you. I, as you, as you said, I am the last of 12 children of Ike and Fanny Stubblefield, who, like most of their era, um, in the rural South, uh, were consigned to work farms as sharecroppers.

So, um, when I was born, we lived on a plantation. Um, which had perhaps as much as, uh, 100 families, um, living on the land and working the fields and the crop, the principal crop was, of course, cotton. Um, so it was fortuitous that I was the last because, as you might imagine, The oldest Children, uh, were the heaviest workers.

Uh, they were consigned to toiling in the fields to bring in crops. Um, and, um, since that was the most important thing that they could do, um, they sacrificed school in order to be able to work the farm on that meant, frankly, that the older Children in my family did not have the opportunity to graduate from from school.

Uh, it was too far away, uh, and, um, and the work itself called. So, uh, the younger members of the family, uh, were able to, um, go to school because we moved away when I was seven years old, and when we moved away from the farm, Um, we were required to go to school, and that was, that was what saved me, really, that I could get an education.

So, in spite of that, um, I would say that, uh, for all of my childhood, uh, up to my graduation from high school, we had a very bare, uh, existence. Um, as again, most of that error and of that economic station had, we lived, um, we moved to Houston in fifth ward and it was really a very poor community at the time with laborers, principally and maids.

Occupying the meager opportunities for employment in Houston at the time. So, um, my father, uh, became a janitor when he moved to Houston and my mother was a maid growing up, I understood in the racial environment of that moment that I was not to have. The hope for a different kind of life, because as Zachary said, hope was illegal in that era, certainly for blacks.

So the aspiration to do something significant with my life simply didn’t exist. I was going to follow in the footsteps of all the women I knew who were maids. It was only the fact that I was able to go to school and to be inspired by teachers and to love learning that I began to see a way different from what I was supposed to do.

And that was through the good graces of teachers who inspired me, who encouraged me. And who did the most miraculous thing, and that is they were able to dream of a different future from the one we lived in at the moment. And I often say that had it been up to us, we would never have anticipated that life would change so dramatically, and therefore we wouldn’t have worked toward that end.

But because they were not mired in that reality, they could dream of a future for us different from what we knew. And it was their dreams that made possible our aspirations.

[00:09:13] Jeremi: That’s extraordinary. And, and one of the many things that moved me in your book that you’ve just referred to are the, the heroic women you, you express in your book a lot of affection for your father, but, but he’s clearly a problematic figure.

And I’ll leave it to the readers to, to, to, to read that. But, but your mother, your, your mother’s work ethic, and then I, if I’m remembering correctly, Dr. Simmons. Teachers you single out are mostly all women. And to what is that significant to the story? How should we think about women in this journey that you’re describing?

[00:09:46] Ruth: I think the only reason that women are highlighted in the end story, I clearly. Had the benefit of male teachers and role models, but in that moment of crushing need, men were not, and I was a girl, men were not able to put their arms around us and take care of us as Parental figures that would not have been proper, so to speak, and so it was it was the women who who had no barriers, um, they could, um, as you may have read, they could ask me to come to their house, for example, for dinner, they could put me in their car and take me places that enlarged my perspective about the city that I lived in, they could do, there were no barriers because they were there.

And really expected in a, in a sense in this village, they were expected to do more, to be motherly and so on. And so, uh, but they were quite extraordinary and most extraordinary of all, um, that I’ve wrestled with over the years is the fact that they could be so. Because after all, uh, these were, uh, in many ways, uh, the worst of times.

We had, this is before, um, the civil rights gains. This was before, uh, Jim Crow was definitively eliminated. Uh, this is before really any robust integration. So here we are isolated in our community told that we could not achieve told that we were worthless and should not expect much of life and so on.

And yet here are these individuals who are guiding us to a place that’s very different and instilling in us, uh, aspirations that go far beyond what we understand to be our limitations. Where did

[00:11:52] Jeremi: this hope come from, uh, Dr. Simmons? I mean, why was there not a, um, a diving into cynicism, which I sense a little bit in your, in your father in some of the ways you describe him at times.

How did these women, how did you find hope and keep this hope realistic and make it realistic in, in what are such difficult circumstances? Well,

[00:12:13] Ruth: as I say, I, I, I think they carried that hope for me for a long period of time before I dared. Believe it myself. And so what’s a child to do? If you go into classroom and you meet a teacher who says to you that, uh, you are worthy and that you are welcome and that you are important, um, what is a child to do, but to respond to that, uh, and to want to be better as a consequence of the.

positive attitude that the teachers have. So in some ways I think I was more trying to please these wonderful people who seemed so positive in a dark time that I was more focused on what I could do to make sure they. knew how much I valued their enthusiasm, uh, and their, and their help. And of course, um, as you know, my mother died when I was 15 and my world absolutely fell apart.

I was in going into the, uh, 11th grade at that time. And all of a sudden, these teachers rushed in to embrace me, to watch over me, to challenge me, to make sure that I knew I was not alone. It was a magnificent time for the teaching profession, because at that moment, blacks had very few professional opportunities.

And so the idea of a brilliant black person who’s educated, um, and employed at that moment in the, in the early sixties, let’s say, um, well, there’s only one really, um, or one or two professions they can. Aspire to one is teaching in black schools. And so we were blessed to have teachers who were, um, were, uh, supremely well qualified, uh, very smart, um, uh, very Uh, self possessed, um, uh, and you know, we look today for people who are going in, if you look at college students today and you look at their professions, they’re thinking about, well, I mean, one wants to be an investment banker, another, a lawyer, another, a physician and so forth.

Well, imagine all of that. Passion and all of that intelligence going into the teaching profession. That’s what it was like in those days. And so we benefited immensely from these spectacular people. And I

[00:14:58] Jeremi: have to say, your book really describes the character of these teachers. And some of them seem to me to be larger than life characters.

And it’s wonderful. It’s one of my favorite parts of the book. And I also do want to emphasize this was a public school. And you’re talking about public school teachers. Yes, of course. Zachary, how

[00:15:18] Zachary: did this early experience of education shape your experience in higher education through college and graduate school and then later as an academic yourself?

[00:15:29] Ruth: Well, I’ve talked a good bit about the environment in the schools and how inspired I was by these teachers, but I should also say that I fell in love with learning. The power of learning because. It was the antidote that I needed to remove me from a sordid world. And by that I mean, by reading, I could escape the Texas of the 40s and 50s.

I could read about foreign environments and imagine worlds that were very different from the world that I lived in. And learning about the existence of other environments rescued me. Um, and allowed me to believe that quite possibly there were other, uh, worlds that I could inhabit at some point. So, I would say that by the time I was in high school, I was already enthralled with this, the power of education.

Because although they could tell me that I couldn’t go into a department store, uh, or I couldn’t go to a particular, uh, university or school, or I couldn’t enjoy the full benefits of citizenship, they could tell me that, but they could not control what I put in my mind. And it occurred to me as a young person that learning was the most powerful thing I could do because it gave me absolute control over what I could know.

And so, in a way, I would say that’s what fueled my journey in education, the fact that it was so important to me. that it rescued me, that it gave me hope, that it propelled me beyond what I thought I’d ever be able to do. I was absolutely sold on the idea that education was the most powerful thing that we could offer young people.

And I wanted to be associated with it for the rest of my life. And so, uh, it seemed natural for me to continue to study, to advance through graduate school, and to become, um, a professor, uh, because that was a way for me to, uh, certainly begin to express to students how vital it was that they care for their minds.

In the way that they care for other their possessions that they that they feed their minds in the way that they feed their bodies and so forth. So I wanted to inspire that same feeling in other young people because it had done so much for me.

[00:18:28] Jeremi: I could listen to you forever, Dr. Simmons. That’s, that’s mana from heaven, what you’re describing.

It’s, I think, the mission of us as educators and the power of education opening up opportunities for people of all different kinds of backgrounds. You describe in your book… your time at Dillard University, which is a historically black college and university in New Orleans. And then you begin to describe the transition to Harvard, where you did your PhD, how did you make that transition, especially from Dillard to Harvard, going from, uh, what had been through most of your life, largely African American environments to a world where there were not many other African Americans in roles such as yours.

How did you make that transition?

[00:19:12] Ruth: Fortunately, I had. Um, some inter, uh, veening experiences that broadened my world a bit at the first was, um, this conviction that I had that there was another world I needed to know about. And so I got on a Greyhound bus and took off one summer. When I was at Dillard to go to Mexico to live with a Mexican family and to study Spanish.

Now, I didn’t tell my family where I was going because they would have been livid and would not have permitted it, of course. Um, but so that was my first experience really interact being in classes with, uh, with, uh, with whites. And then I came back. to, uh, at the end of that summer. And I was able to go to Wellesley College for my junior year.

Um, and at Wellesley, of course, there were, there was a handful of black students, maybe, uh, not, not much more than that. And so I had the experience of working and learning. And being tested in a very competitive academic environment at Wellesley, but I came back to Dillard for my senior year and then graduated from Dillard.

So, so the experience in Mexico, the experience at Wellesley, and then I also had a summer. In France, um, at the end of my junior year with the experiment in international living where again, I lived with the French family and got to know a different culture. By then, I’m totally convinced that I need to know something about the world.

And that I need to know how to understand people different from me. The one thing I knew I could not ever tolerate was to have the same narrowness of mind that had subjected everybody I loved to the worst possible consequences. And so I didn’t want to be a racist. I wanted to be open to differences of all kinds.

And so I was practicing this at a very young age and on a quest to test myself to make sure that I could be adaptable in different circumstances and that I would be willing to, uh, reach out to people who are very different from me. So by the time I, and then I had a Fulbright, uh, after Dillard and I studied for a year in France.

So by the time I got to Harvard, I had, uh, I would say a variety of experiences that helped me. adjust to the circumstances of being a student, a graduate student at Harvard. But how

[00:21:52] Jeremi: did you deal with the racism you most certainly confronted in all kinds of ways then and thereafter? I mean, what’s extraordinary to me about your career, and we’re going a little bit after the book chronologically now, but what’s extraordinary to me about your career is, um, how many times you must have been the only African American, uh, in the room.

[00:22:15] Ruth: Yes. Well, I, um, here, my mother’s death had such a profound influence on me, and it did something that was very important. It forced me to think about who I was and what I had learned growing up. And as I dealt with her death, I was comforted by the fact that she had taught me many things. She taught me never to think myself superior to other human beings.

She taught me to be kind and generous because she was the epitome of, of both. She taught me never to separate myself from my family and from my people. And so really, I think what happened is I became secure in who I was. And I wasn’t trying to impress anybody. I was trying to be as deeply who I was as possible, and at the same time, be constantly open to learning, uh, about, about others, but never denying who I was.

So I think it was being anchored in that way, uh, made it possible for me to be Unshaken, uh, by these cultural experiences, uh, when people thought I was unworthy, when they thought I didn’t belong, when they thought I wasn’t good enough and so forth. Um, that really never touched me in a profound way. Uh, but, but again, because my mother had done her work, she’d left me early, but she’d done her work and she had taught me how to be strong in who I was and how to respect myself, um, and, and not, uh, bend to the interests, uh, and the criticisms, uh, uh, of others.

So

[00:24:21] Jeremi: I guess that, that leads to, uh, our sort of contemporary, uh, question for you, and we always like to, to close Dr. Simmons by sort of taking this history, and you’ve given us a very inspiring history here, and applying it to contemporary issues, uh, not in a narrow way, but in a, in a broad way, I have many students who come from Disadvantaged backgrounds into my classrooms, and I obviously can’t change their home environment.

I can’t give them your mother, but many of them struggle. What? What should we be doing? What? What? What is the role for educational institutions today? What are the lessons we can take from your story as we think about diversity and opportunity in our institutions today? Thank

[00:25:04] Ruth: you for that. I often say that I wrote this book actually for for my students because All the questions I’ve gotten from them in moments of doubt and distress and disappointment because I don’t think that young people today who are facing the extraordinary challenges that they are admittedly facing can understand that a life is made up of many peaks and valleys, and one can’t always predict the value of everything one encounters, but there are things that you can do that will maximize the possibility that you’re going to be okay in the long run.

And so I talk to my students a good deal about a mindset that enables them to be hopeful about what they can ultimately do. And that mindset is one that emphasizes the importance of personal commitment to ongoing learning, not formulaic kind of learning, not a fixed syllabus per se, but an attitude about learning, which is, I am here.

To learn about who I am in the world and to learn about the rest of the world. And that means every opportunity that one is afforded to build the knowledge of what is here in the world should be taken advantage of even when it seems. A minor opportunity, even when it seems that the person who can help you is not a very important person, it doesn’t matter.

And so what I like to tell them is that most of the time I could, I could not have predicted the people in my life who would have been the most important in assuring my hopefulness and my success. I couldn’t predict it that I tell them about. A woman who was a maid who had the most powerful experience on me as a learner and as a human being.

I tell them about a man who, uh, was Jewish and who was my boss who criticized me so Relentlessly to improve my work. And he was my greatest mentor because he helped me to grow. I tell them about other challenges that I’ve had that I embraced. And because I embraced them, I was able to do something better, uh, learn more, uh, and I think be a better, a better person.

So I think the most important thing for young people to know is that they cannot predict. The way their life will go, nor the opportunities they, they will have, I would never in a million years have said that growing up in Fifth Ward, Houston, being on a sharecropping farm, I would be the first African American to lead an Ivy League university.

That would not have been possible. Okay. And yet, step by step, By learning, um, by being, uh, serious about my purpose, by being open, uh, to criticism, I managed to claw my way through a life that really has incredible meaning, I think, uh, and I couldn’t be happier today. with what I’ve been able to do because I have tried every day of my life to live it fully and to take advantage of every opportunity to learn.

[00:28:49] Jeremi: Zachary, uh, I know on your campus, like on ours here in Austin and throughout education, we talk about these issues all the time, but not quite in the way that Dr. Simmons does. What are your thoughts on this, Zachary?

[00:29:04] Zachary: I think that this is a vital reminder for all students, but also Every, every learner, which I think is every one of us, uh, about the importance of, of, of maintaining a love for learning, a curiosity, uh, and also about the importance of, of, of education and of educators, uh, I think it’s very easy for, for students to forget.

That, uh, the secret to success is, as we’ve talked about, curiosity, always being willing to learn, to take new ideas seriously, and on the other hand, we also need educators who will help inspire young people to, to, to be the best learners that they can be, um, and so I think those two reminders, the importance of educators and the importance of a love of learning, I think those are, are so powerful, especially in a moment where, and at a time in our lives when we’re College students like myself, but I think also all of us are sometimes forgetting how much we love and enjoy learning.

And meeting new people and encountering new

[00:30:07] Jeremi: ideas. It sounds, Zachary, like you’re making an argument or applying Dr. Simmons insights as an argument for the liberal arts. Yes?

[00:30:16] Zachary: It is an argument for the liberal arts, and I think it’s also an argument for the importance of good teachers. And I hope more of my fellow students will consider.

As, as I have, and as my older sister, Natalie, uh, whom many of you will be familiar with, has also considered and, and will likely pursue a career in teaching, which is a career in, in public service. And, and I, I think that this story that, uh, Dr. Simmons has kindly shared with us is only a, a very poignant reminder.

Of how important learning is and how important those early moments of education can be for a child’s

[00:30:56] Jeremi: life. Yes. Yes. Dr. Simmons, this is the last question. I promise. Uh, what, what can our listeners do in addition to cultivating this curiosity and openness that you display so well, what, what can they do to help others to help the other young Ruth Simmons out there?

What does allyship mean to you?

[00:31:18] Ruth: Well, first of all, I think the most important thing for us is to embrace the, that there is talent, intelligence, and potential in every reach of the country, in poorest communities. And if we don’t make it possible for children who are in underserved communities to develop the interventions of support and education, then we are really missing our crucial function as citizens.

So, I think I often encourage people to do whatever they can do to help, um, children, um, at any age, um, come into the world of learning. I’m absolutely confident. That if we can get students to that point, they’ll be fine, okay, but we’ve got to get them to that point because we’re losing too many children who drop out, who cannot sustain any kind of upward trajectory at all because they’re the problems are too immense, and there is no hope.

Uh, in their lives. And so, whatever we can do, join groups that are helping, uh, children like those. Uh, there’s so many of them. There’s so many, uh, worthwhile efforts underway. And everybody who has a care for these children should sign up to do whatever they can. Whether it’s working directly in a school.

Um, volunteering for school or any other organization that is helping.

[00:33:07] Jeremi: I think you’ve given us very pragmatic marching orders of getting involved, rolling up our sleeves, uh, and you’ve given us an inspiring, uh, idealistic, but very realistic framework. Uh, Dr. Simmons, I want to thank you for sharing your story with us and taking some time to talk to us.

I want to encourage all of our listeners who I’m sure are equally inspired. By what you’ve heard to read the book because there’s so much more, uh, in this book, as I’m sure all of you can tell, listening, Dr. Simmons is also a very talented writer as well as a talented thinker and leader. The title of the book is Up Home, One Girl’s, uh, Journey, and it’s available everywhere for purchase.

I’m sure. Uh, Dr. Simmons, thank you again for joining us today. Thank you.

[00:33:53] Ruth: It’s been a

[00:33:54] Jeremi: pleasure. Zachary, thank you for your really beautiful poem, your insights. I think you brought together some of the points we were discussing very well and applied them to your own experience as a student. Um, so thank you, Zachary, and thank you most of all to our loyal listeners for joining us for this episode.

Of This Is Democracy.

[00:34:23] Outro: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts ITS Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Jerez Codini. Stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find This Is Democracy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

See you next time.