Jazmyn Dozier, the founding president of the Auburn section of the National Council for Negro Women, started the organization soon after she got here in spring 2022.
“So I got to Auburn and I realized there’s not really a lot of racial diversity here,” Dozier said. “Like there wasn’t enough safe spaces for Black people in the community here. There just seemed like there wasn’t enough out there for us, like I know we have BSU and the NAACP, but I wanted to just create a safe space to foster conversations in the Black community and just get to know each other.”
The National Council of Negro Women, Inc. is a nonprofit organization founded in 1935 with the mission to advance the opportunities and quality of life for African American women and their families. On college campuses, that mission doesn’t shift much.
The idea came to Dozier last March, and by April she was putting up flyers everywhere around campus to advertise the new organization.
“People started signing up, and I reached out to people but things were slow because we had the break for summer,” Dozier said. “But in August, September that’s when things really started picking up.”
The first meeting for the club was in October, and they had a solid turnout of 11 people, according to Dozier, and she was very excited about it. Since then, they have expanded to about 20 people.
Of the events they hosted in fall 2022, one was a self-care-themed event, where the participants put on face masks and talked about how they could implement self-care in everyday life. Almost all of the events NCNW hosts are self-run by the people in the organization, namely the president, but they are hoping to implement more guest speakers.
This semester, they planned to have people who are licensed talk about stuff like HIV.
“We’re also implementing our purple table talks,” Dozier said. “Which is kind of like Jada Pinkett Smith’s. One talk we had was about being at a PWI as a minority student, and another one about cuffing season.”
Other events held this semester included a Messy Monday Tea Party, and a trivia night with the Black Card Revoked card game.
So far, Dozier cites one moment with a fellow transfer student at the PWI purple table talk that has stuck out to her since she founded NCNW.
“She was like, I just thought there was never any space for me like that, and it just makes me sad that I don’t have anybody to talk to,” Dozier said. “I was kind of like, well, that’s why we’re here.”
Sharlina Guillaume, the vice president for NCNW and a fellow transfer student joined the organization for similar reasons: a place of community.
“The real thing is I hadn’t really found a community where I felt like I’d belonged yet,” Guillaume said. “NCNW is still kind of new, too, so we’re kind of trying to build that authentic friendship. You can’t really force it.”
Guillaume said that the mission of NCNW, to her, is more or less trying to advocate for Black women, and it’s important for them to have that space.
“I know for me, growing up, a lot of topics were forbidden to speak of,” Guillaume said. “We’re not going to talk about that because it’s uncomfortable, and so here we can open up. It’s like, alright, here are four walls and you’re free to talk about whatever you want because this is your space.”
Dozier said her hopes for NCNW going forward is that ten years from now, it’s still going strong.
“I want to be able to look back and say, wow, I built that,” Dozier said.
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Destini Ambus, senior in journalism, pursuing a minor in sociology is the editor-in-chief of The Auburn Plainsman.
