Civil Rights
After World War II and through the 1950s, Simmons College was quiet. The first stirrings of renewed activism at Simmons College were mentioned only in passing in The Simmons News. In March of 1960, the Student Government Council took a stand against segregation in the South, writing letters of complaint and encouraging students to engage in a letter writing campaign to Woolworth’s. This article in The Simmons News is the first time Simmons students discussed a “sit-in” as a means of peaceful protest.
In February of 1962, Janice Kozerya, a Simmons College freshman, traveled to Maryland to participate in an ongoing civil rights sit-in demonstration. Along with the majority of the protesters at the event, Janice was arrested, charged, and convicted for trespassing. That same spring, fourteen Simmons students participated in a Peace March in Washington, D.C., designed to express discontent with the continued testing of nuclear weapons. Another twenty students protested the same event in Boston Common with students from other colleges in the area. Carrying signs that read, “No testing, no shelters,” “Civil Defense is no defense,” and “Call a Truce to Terror,” these students and faculty members were largely jeered or ignored by passers-by. All participants steadfastly maintained they were protesting as individuals and did not represent Simmons College.
In 1965, the Civil Rights Club was founded, marking the first student organization at Simmons College to explicitly dedicate resources to promoting civil rights. The mission of the Club was to both serve as a vehicle to involve more students and faculty in the Civil Rights Movement and to create an environment for discussing and clarifying misconceptions about the movement. In 1966, the Simmons Civil Rights Club (SCRC) was founded to bring civil rights projects in Boston and at other campuses closer to Simmons. Its members performed volunteer community aid work and brought in speakers to address subjects such as Black rights and urban affairs. In 1967, SCRC became the Black Student Organization (BSO), which immediately became one of the most active student groups on the Simmons College campus.