The Bob Graham Center for Public Service provides a wide variety of programs for students and the larger public on topics related to public service, public leadership and civic engagement.
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Election Hero Day Lunch with Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons
November 7, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
To mark UF’s observance of Election Hero Day, students are cordially invited to a lunchtime conversation with humanitarian and voting rights activist Dr. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons on Monday, November 7 at noon in the O’Neill Reading Room (2nd floor, Pugh Hall).
A recording of her talk is at this link.
Dr. Simmons will discuss her experiences as a college student who was active with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and her work in voter registration and desegregation activities during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
She is now a retired UF professor of religion and women’s studies. She received her bachelor’s from Antioch University in human services and her master’s and Ph.D. in religion with a specific focus on Islam from Temple University.
Dr. Simmons has a long history in the area of civil rights, human rights and peace work. For 23 years she worked at the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker peace, justice, human rights and international development organization headquartered in Philadelphia. During her early adult years as a college student and thereafter, she was active with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and spent seven years working full time on voter registration and desegregation activities in Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.