Our Work

The Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice positions itself as a multidisciplinary effort, drawing from an array of existing programs that can, together, facilitate greater understanding of group dynamics on the one hand and the need for more engagement on the other hand to strengthen and sustain civil society. The Center’s activities will include:

• Encouraging research innovation that helps students better understand how scholars collect data, develop research, and present their findings to the public ;
• Educational programs for the public based on our research findings;
• Support for groundbreaking scholarship and research that adds to knowledge about new areas that require urgent attention from policymakers.

We are happy to share the first three projects to be launched. These will be the centerpieces of early work.

The Epa Committee on the Legacy of Slavery and the Impact of Segregation at Prairie View A&M University will conduct a comprehensive study of the impact of slavery and segregation on our campus, which is located on the grounds of the former Alta Vista Plantation, owned by Mrs. Helen Marr Kirby, the widow of the late Colonel Jared Ellison Kirby.

The PVAMU HBCU Voting Rights Lab will collect oral histories and important documents and outline the case history of the students’ role in demanding voting rights and representation at HBCUs, starting with our own campus and expanding to others. This will be a post-civil rights political study of HBCUs as we endeavor to record, archive, and report our own stories.