Gerri Williams ‘73

Transcript

Interviewer: Kas Hunt (KH)

Narrator: Gerri Williams (GW)

KH: Mmhmm so you felt a sense of community and togetherness during your time at Simmons?

GW: Yeah. And I’ll say this too, it was my first experience coming from coming from a state where the Black population was so small, to also be meeting other African Americans from uh from areas, you know where there where there were a lot of other Black folks and where they were, you know, Black organizations, social organizations that they've been involved with and sororities and things like that. I had never really experienced that aspect of Black life on that scale, so it was just really interesting to meet African Americans from all over the country.

KH: Mm Hmm did you feel like there was a community among the African American students?

GW: I do, oh I do uh a couple of times um I’d get together with them and go to football football games off campus visiting other Black organizations at different campuses and so that too was, you know that really widened my you know my my contact with that aspect of Black life. And there really was more of a you know, growing sense of Black liberation and um and you know again much, much more much more literature now being being produced and I can't really think
about if this was reflected in our class work. I you know I'd have to go back and see where their specific courses about Black literature, African American literature I don't, I don't know I don't remember. Um because most of my classwork is I look at my transcript it was it was almost 100% involved with with communications media and journalism and structure of the English language, graphic design, uh I did a internship with the printer, but at the same time, and this is something that was really uh I think innovative about Simm- that Simmons offered is, we were able to take classes at Emmanuel College next door and what was that other one? I think it was Emerson which also had a very strong communication component, but I was interested, you know, my minor, it was Latin American studies and I was interested to take Portuguese and I could take it through um this program with Emmanuel so that's the other you know the other the other sort of widening influence that Simmons provided through you know, through um the sharing with Emmanuel and and and not only that, I was able to get a a grant to travel and study Portuguese in in Brazil. And I got that through Simmons so I was able to get this international experience in this multicultural, you know very Afro based culture of Brazil um and to have that experience for a summer and getting my language skills up as well.