Charles Simmons, founder and president of Sojourner-Douglass College in Baltimore, passed away on January 26. He was 87 years old.
Dr. Simmons grew up in Baltimore’s Poe Homes, one of the city’s first public housing projects built for Black families during segregation. In 1970, he graduated from the Baltimore branch campus of Antioch College with a degree in urban development and sociology. Later in his career, he earned a Ph.D. in higher education administration.
In 1972, Dr. Simmons co-founded the Homestead-Montebello Center of Antioch College, a nonprofit, independent institution of higher education. By 1980, the institution officially changed its name to Sojourner-Douglass College, in honor of Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. The institution would go on to educate more than 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students across several campuses. While it was established too late to be designated as a historically Black college, the institution’s student population was almost all Black.
Following several years of financial challenges, Sojourner-Douglass College lost its accreditation in 2015 and closed its doors the following year.
