In Rhode Island, blacks make up about 5 percent of the population and hold 6 of the 100 seats in the state House of Representatives. One of the 50 senators is black. At the turn of the last century, such representation of black Americans would have been unthinkable. There are also signs not so easily reduced to arid statistics that achievement has moved beyond the tired black stereotypes of athletics and music. And yet, and yet . . .
Drugs still claim a disproportionate number of black lives.
It could very well have meant that I would be living in a segregated community in Texas, struggling to make a living in a menial position, as my parents did. Simmons is in her imposing office at Smith College, the historic women's institution in Northampton, Mass., where she has been president since 1995 and founded the first undergraduate engineering program at a women's college. Smith's endowment nearly doubled during her tenure. She will be staying at Smith until she takes over at Brown, in July. Simmons is 53, the 12th child of a sharecropper, brought up in Houston.