Maxine B. Mimms (born 1928) is a U.S. educator and founder of the Tacoma Campus of Evergreen State College in Tacoma, Washington.
She is a friend of Maya Angelou and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and serves on the advisory board for the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.

Early life and education
Mimms was born in Newport News, Virginia on March 4, 1928 to parents Isabella DeBerry Buie and Benson Ebenezer Buie. She attended Booker T. Washington School and graduated from Huntington High School with highest honors in 1946. She earned her B.A. from Virginia Union University in 1950.

Career

Early career 
In the early 1950s, Mimms relocated to Detroit, Michigan where she served as a social worker. She would later earn a Ph.D. in educational administration from Union Graduate School in San Francisco. When her husband was appointed to a university post in 1953, they relocated to Seattle, Washington where Mimms taught at Leschi Elementary School. Among her 4th grade students was Jimi Hendrix who pantomimed playing drums and taught the class a song to remember the names of the continents.

In 1961, Mimms taught in Washington's Kirkland Public Schools until working for the Seattle Public School Administration in 1964. In 1969, Mimms served as special assistant to the director of the Women's Bureau in the United States Department of Labor, Elizabeth Duncan Koontz.

Evergreen State College 
In 1972, Mimms returned to the education field, working as a faculty member at Evergreen State College. At Evergreen State College, Mimms focused on developing an educational program that would serve place-bound working adult students. Her focus on serving the educational needs of urban, African American adult learners combined with an interest in teaching inner-city adults, led to the founding principles of the Tacoma Campus. In 1982, the Evergreen Tacoma campus was finally formalized with Mimms as the program's director, and the motto "Enter to Learn, Depart to Serve". Mimms's goal was to provide an educational experience that would attract and retain black students from the Hilltop neighborhood.

In 1982, the Evergreen-Tacoma campus was formally established under Mimms's leadership. Mimms's mission as Director of Evergreen-Tacoma was to increase the number of African Americans in Washington with degrees and improve the household value on education for the African American community. Mimms became a national consultant in curriculum design and instructional methods. In 1990, Mimms retired as Director of Evergreen-Tacoma and became an emeritus faculty member. In 2001, Mimms was awarded the first annual Sustainable Community Outstanding Leadership Award.

Maxine Mimms Academy 
In 2004, Mimms founded the Maxine Mimms Academy, a non-profit organization in Tacoma's Hilltop neighborhood established to serve youth expelled or suspended from public schools.

References

Further reading 
 
 

1928 births
21st-century African-American educators
21st-century American women educators
21st-century American educators
Evergreen State College faculty
Living people
People from Newport News, Virginia
Virginia Union University alumni
20th-century African-American educators
20th-century American educators
20th-century American women educators
African-American women educators