Maxine Mimms, founding director of Evergreen’s Tacoma campus, has died, college announces

Maxine Mimms, a longtime faculty member at The Evergreen State College and a founding director of the college’s Tacoma campus, has died, the college announced.

Mimms, who was 96, died Tuesday morning in her sleep in Auburn where she was receiving hospice care, said the college’s Executive Vice President Dexter Gordon.

He met with her as recently as Sunday evening and said she was surrounded by friends and family who were holding her hand and singing to her.

“I will remember her hats, her stories, her laughter and her spirit,” Gordon said. “I watched new people meet her. It took one greeting and they looked and sounded like longstanding friends, chatting together.”

Joye Hardiman, a former executive director of Evergreen Tacoma, said in a Facebook post that a “rainbow has been added to the sky.”

“All hail to the chief,” she said in her post. “Our 5-star general has joined the celestial army. All who have been ‘Maxined’ are ready to carry out their assignments.”

Her passing was announced to the Evergreen community in an email from Gordon, Evergreen President John Carmichael, and Noah Coburn, who is Provost and Vice President for Academics.

“It is with a deep sense of loss that we write to share news that Evergreen faculty emerita, Dr. Maxine Buie Mimms, passed away peacefully (Tuesday) morning,” they wrote.

She joined Evergreen as a faculty member in 1972 and retired in 1992.

Mimms was passionate about making a college education available to everyone, “especially historically underrepresented communities like her neighbors in the heart of Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood,” they wrote. That helped prompt the creation of Evergreen’s Tacoma campus, which officially became part of Evergreen in 1982.

“Dr. Mimms remained an active mentor and supporter of Evergreen Tacoma, and the broader South Sound African American community until her death,” they wrote. “Her counsel was sought at all levels of her community to the end of her long, remarkable life.”

Executive Vice President Gordon first met Maxine in the early 2000s when he was still teaching at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.

She called Gordon out of the blue one day, he recalls, saying she had heard about him and his work on race and pedagogy and that “we need you with our work over here.”

That work was with the Maxine Mimms Academies, he said.

“I was amazed to hear about this retired professor whose focus was on helping students who had either dropped out or were pushed out of high school to recover school credits,” he said.

He became involved in that work, then later discovered her involvement with Evergreen and other organizations.

“I began to encounter her name all over the place,” he said. “ She had worked across government, community, K-12 education and just generally Maxine Mimms is associated with everything Tacoma.”

It was never about her, though, he said. She would always listen and ask, “What are we going to do for these kids in the future?”

Mimms was twice interviewed by the History Makers, a nonprofit creating the “digital repository for the Black experience.” As part of that work, they produced a biography of her life.

Mimms was born March 4, 1928, in Newport News, Virginia. She attended Booker T. Washington School and graduated from Huntington High School in 1946. She earned her undergraduate degree from Virginia Union University in 1950 and later a doctorate in educational administration from Union Graduate School, according to the site .

She later taught in the Seattle area, worked for the Department of Labor and joined Evergreen in the early 1970s.

“At The 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,” the site reads.

Even as recently as Sunday evening, Maxine remained engaged with Evergreen, Gordon said.

During the conversation, it was mentioned that the 18-year-old grandson of a former student was now attending Evergreen Tacoma. Maxine said she had introduced the grandmother and grandfather.

“She was everywhere and everything, a larger-than-life figure,” Gordon said.

College officials said: “We will share information about ways to remember Maxine when it becomes available.”