Kathy Boudin, Cheryl Wilkins, and the Center for Justice
For two women whose lives have become inextricably intertwined, Kathy Boudin and Cheryl Wilkins have dramatically different backgrounds. Cheryl grew up in a single-parent home in the South Bronx, where opportunities for higher education were scarce, especially for women.
Cheryl Wilkins and Kathy Boudin accepting their award at CCF's 2017 Gala
Kathy grew up in a middle-class family in Greenwich Village, with parents who both had college degrees - for Kathy, college was not only accessible but an expectation.
Kathy and Cheryl’s lives crossed paths when they both found themselves incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in the 1990s. Kathy had been imprisoned since the early 80s but had continued her education on the inside. By the time Cheryl got to Bedford Hills in 1997, Pell Grant eligibility had already been revoked from incarcerated students. Kathy remembers,
Both Kathy and Cheryl spent their time inside prison doing as much for the community as possible. With the AIDS epidemic reaching historic highs inside correctional facilities, Kathy had dedicated herself to peer education to combat the spread of the disease. Having left a baby son behind when she was arrested, Kathy was deep in self-reflection, leading her to create a parenting program to help keep incarcerated parents connected with their children at home. In the meantime, both Kathy and Cheryl were focused on bringing higher education back to Bedford Hills.
“What I remember most about that time is that we knew there was a possibility that college would be coming back,” Cheryl says. “But when the women on the inside talked about it, they left out the word ‘possibility’ because they were so excited. They just said ‘College is coming back!’”
Education had meant so much to the women at Bedford Hills. “College represented not just a change for them while they were inside, but also changes in their relationships with their kids and changes in what was possible for them after prison,” Cheryl remembers. “Those that had the opportunity to pursue college had transformed their lives when they got home. So when all that was taken away, folks just thought ‘What do we do now?’”
Fortunately for the women at Bedford Hills, superintendent Elaine Lord was fully supportive of their hopes to bring college back. Kathy, Cheryl, and some other women formed an advisory group, which focused on developing a learning center, building out a college-prep curriculum, talking to college presidents, and everything else needed to set up a new college program post- Pell.
Eventually, they were able to bring in a college program from Marymount Manhattan. One of the Marymount professors was Barbara Martinsons, CCF’s founder.
As the project progressed, Cheryl played a large role in developing its components. “There were so many levels to this,” she explains. “Some of our Latina sisters needed to learn to speak English, so we had an ESL class. There was a gap between GED-level students and college- level students, so we created a college prep course. I didn’t have a degree yet, but I was good at math - so I taught a college prep math class. The difference between women inside doing the teaching and somebody coming from outside to teach was that the lessons didn’t stop after the class ended.
By the time Kathy and Cheryl were released in the early 2000s, Kathy had finished her Master’s and started on a Ph.D., while Cheryl had earned her Bachelor’s. With Barbara as a mutual connection, they both joined CCF to continue their education.
“I can’t stress enough how important CCF was to me,” says Kathy. “Like so many people, I was overwhelmed by everything I had to learn. Having a community really gave me a place to deal with the realities. It didn’t matter what level degree we were getting. We were all going through the same experience. Community had been an important thing for me in prison, and it was an important thing coming home.”
For Cheryl, community was just as important. “I had gone to a CCF graduation, and there was nothing more inspiring,” she remembers. ”It reminded me of our graduations on the inside. It started my journey to my Master’s degree. This community wasn’t just about education. It was for women who needed support, particularly those that had children or aging parents.”
Cheryl was also an original cast member of the Theater for Social Change Ensemble, which added an advocacy element to her experience. “Statistics are important, but it’s the stories that change people’s minds,” she says. “And the group gave us an opportunity to work through our trauma. No one talked about it at that time, but at CCF we did.”
Cheryl and Kathy were both eager to do more for the community that had fundamentally changed the direction of both their lives. “I had an idea that we could take mass incarceration and make that a central focus for students and professors at Columbia. I spoke to Barbara about it, and she said, ‘Why don’t you talk to Cheryl about it? Maybe she’ll work with you on it.’” That was the inception of Columbia University’s Center for Justice, founded by Cheryl and Kathy.
"I'm proud of our work at the Center for Justice," says Kathy. "We call it justice beyond the punishment paradigm. We've raised the issue of the punishment system from the beginning, but the first work that we did was work that Cheryl had been leading, which was about higher education in prison. I'm really proud that as formerly incarcerated women, we started the work at Columbia valuing the voices of those who are directly impacted and challenging the academic model that says that a certain critical piece of knowledge can only be found inside of the Academy. We know that there is knowledge in the community."
Both Kathy and Cheryl are now veterans of our movement and have been advocating for many decades.