Dr. Charles Simmons - UI&U Alum

For over 40 years, Dr. Charles Simmons has dedicated himself to being an agent of change.  Whether as a jazz club manager in Baltimore during the 1960s, a freedom leader in church basements, or a college founder and president, Dr. Simmons has continually used education to promote social justice and advancement.

A Baltimore native, Dr. Simmons began his professional life as a Marine, and in 1959 returned to Maryland to play his part in the “burgeoning black cultural revolution.”  He soon began holding ‘freedom schools,’ meetings held in church basements to “teach black children about themselves through their history in order to inspire in them a love for learning.” When searching for a place to continue his own education, he sought an institution that would honor his experience, yet open his eyes to new, interdisciplinary ways of thinking.

He found the right fit at Union Institute & University, which was “pivotal in shaping my philosophy and world view, especially my advocacy for alternative education for African Americans and adults,” he says. “I was well equipped and prepared by my Union Institute & University experience to meet the obstacles, to confront the roadblocks and to solve the puzzles.”  In 1978, Dr. Simmons graduated with his doctorate, prepared to dedicate his life to learning and service.

As founder and president of Sojourner-Douglass College, Maryland’s only predominantly black college, Dr. Simmons now oversees an institution that holds fast to its mission to educate underserved adults and empower members of the community so that they might meet their own goals of self-reliance and community development.  He was recently recognized as the longest-serving college president in the state of Maryland.