“Never let anyone make you feel like you are less,” Barbara Brown Simmons’ father would tell her as he walked her to her day’s classes in the basement of an all-white school in Irvine, Texas, during the years of segregation.
Brown Simmons, who in 1974 became the first Black woman to graduate from the University of New Mexico’s School of Law, was honored in a celebration hosted by the university’s Department of Africana Studies to kick off Black History Month.
Family, friends and faculty members got together at the university’s Alumni Chapel on Friday evening to honor and remember Simmons, who died in July 2021, for her life work and impact on Black student visibility at the university throughout the years.
“As a student, Barbara was a fierce advocate for civil rights and was instrumental in developing UNM’s Black Studies program,” UNM President Garnett Stokes said in a video introduction.
Brown Simmons made history again as the first Black woman to become a member of the state bar of New Mexico.
“I will not be the last,” her sister Linda remembered her saying.
Despite the State Bar ethics committee questioning her criminal record — including a protest against racial inequality she orchestrated during a Lobos basketball game at the Pit, for which she got arrested — she managed to win over the committee and make history, Stokes said.
“I knew her not only to be a proud Black woman but a strong, courageous, dedicated frontline leader for the civil rights of Black people,” said Helen Hamilton, a close friend who knew her since 1965 when she arrived on campus.
Hamilton praised Brown Simmons for her strong work ethic and constant refusal to submit to inequality and injustice. She remembered Brown Simmons’ remarks at the time about feeling invisible as a Black student, and how that motivated her to seek change, founding the Black Student Union.
Brown Simmons went on to become not only a criminal defense attorney and Black history teacher, but a mother, grandmother and great grandmother.
Her remaining sisters and brother joined the celebration, as well as two nieces, her daughter and son-in-law. They shared affectionate stories of Brown Simmons, and described her as a loud, proud and accomplished woman — a “difference maker.”
Family members also thanked those at UNM who supported Brown Simmons throughout the years, expressing gratitude that her work never went unnoticed.
“I’ll stop when there’s nothing left to overcome. I feel a responsibility and obligation and, until I can no longer move, I don’t think that will ever go away,” Simmons said when interviewed for the UNM Black Alumni Chapter Oral History Project in 2016.
During her time as a law student, she helped establish the UNM chapter of the Black American Law Students association, co-founded the UNM Alumni Association’s Black Alumni Chapter and also wrote a proposal titled “Breaking the Chains,” leading to the creation of the Black Studies Program, now known as Africana Studies.
Law school friend Alfred Matthewson remembered Simmons for her fearless and passionate personality, as well as her keen talent for persuasiveness.
“She tirelessly worked to change the world, to change UNM, not so that she would benefit, but so that Black students in the future would not be in the same conditions in which she found them,” Matthewson said. “This is what happens when someone is constantly engaged in good trouble, who prefers justice to popularity.”
Under her leadership, the board of the Alumni Association’s Black Alumni Chapter created the Trailblazer and Living Legend awards, both of which have been recognizing outstanding Black alumni annually since 2011.
“Rest in peace and power my friend, you truly fought a good fight, you kept your faith and finished the race, and there is a crown of righteousness laid out for you,” Hamilton said.
