By Mariam Keita' ‘24
Managing Editor of Web & News Editor
When Kijua Sanders-Murtry, Mount Holyoke College’s Vice President for Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer, was first invited to join the board of directors for The Joseph & Evelyn Lowery Institute for Justice & Human Rights in Atlanta, GA, their first instinct was to decline the opportunity. They were afraid that this new position would interfere with their ability to connect students with opportunities at the Institute.
Prior to arriving in Western Massachusetts to work at Mount Holyoke, Sanders-Murtry worked for Agnes Scott College, a historically women’s college in Decatur, GA, less than ten miles away from the Lowery Institute. Their proximity to the organization’s headquarters and personal connections to the Lowery family led them to become a regular volunteer.
“The very first event I ever did with them was after Trayvon Martin’s murderer was released,” Sanders-McMurtry recalled. “We got together with Reverend [Joseph] Lowery. He asked us to bring college students together. We all met and he just sat with the students and we had sort of an intergenerational conversation about how to develop an action plan to resist racism together.”
Sanders-McMurtry remembered using this conversation as an opportunity to bring Agnes Scott students together with students from the Atlanta University Center Consortium, which consists of the historically Black institutions of Spelman College, Morehouse College and Clark-Atlanta University. The day after students convened, they held a rally.
“We all got together and Reverend Lowery — at that time he was in his 80s and he just wanted to sit with the students — he was able to talk to the students,” Sanders-McMurtry said. “[He was] just saying ‘Don’t lose hope. You know like we actually have to continue to fight racism, but take care of yourselves too.’ It was really beautiful.”
After moving to the Pioneer Valley to take on their new role at Mount Holyoke, Sanders-McMurtry continued working with the Lowery Institute. They decided to make it a goal to connect Mount Holyoke students with the many resources that the Institute had to offer.
“We just had a [Mount Holyoke] student who was selected as one of the [Lowery Institute’s] Scholar-Activists and it comes with a stipend, and so she was able to get that. She’s going to be able to work with other students who want to organize around fighting voter suppression,” Sanders-McMurtry explained. “She was selected and is getting a stipend to work remotely with other students. It’s like a team of six of them and they work collectively in the year but they get paid because it’s a grant-funded position,” they said.
Furthermore, Sanders-McMurtry has been able to leverage their standing with the Lowery Institute to bring new voices into the Mount Holyoke community.
“Last year, with MHC Votes!, one of the student organizations was working on a lot of voter suppression stuff. We were able to connect with Stacey Abrams and with Keisha Lance Bottoms and other people due to that Lowery Institute connection,” Sanders-McMurtry added.
Sanders-McMurtry, who identifies as queer, has also worked to further the Lowery Institute’s work regarding the LGBTQ+ community.
“I think that there’s work that needs to be done, for sure. I think there’s a lot more radical work around LGBTQ inclusion that the organization needs to do and they know that I’m very outspoken about that work,” Sanders-McMurtry said.
“Black people have always resisted white supremacy, always resisted our own oppression, our involuntary labor and enslavement here in [this] country. There’s always been forms of resistance.”
~Kijua Sanders-McMurtry
“Black people have always resisted white supremacy, always resisted our own oppression, our involuntary labor and enslavement here in [this] country. There’s always been forms of resistance,” Sanders-McMurtry said. “The Lowery Institute is another, you know, organization focused on resisting racism, white supremacy, injustice — racial injustice in particular.”
For now, Sanders-McMurtry hopes to continue strengthening the relationship between the Lowery Institute and Mount Holyoke in her new role as a board member. One of their long-term goals is to plan a civil rights tour for students that would have them visit different historical landmarks in the southern United States.
“I would really want … to think about the ways that we tell stories of freedom movements. So, taking students to those actual places, you know histories and legacies related to civil rights and human rights, justice — particularly in the South — is a part of what we’re going to do next together,” Sanders-McMurtry said. “I’m super excited about that.”