Carol Christen’s Review on Sumyyah’s Circle of My Life

Sumyyah Bilal is one of the best known and most beloved leaders in the field of career development and career information.  Through her early career in education and career guidance, taking the helm at EUREKA.org, and EUREKA’s sponsorship of the California Career Conference (which morphed into the International Career Development Conference), Sumyyah has mentored, nurtured, educated, challenged and befriended thousands (tens of thousands?) of people involved in the careers field.

As anyone who has spent more than five minutes with Sumyyah knows, she could make her living as a profession raconteur to rival Mark Twain.  As someone who has listened to and enjoyed hours of her story-telling, it was an easy decision to ask that Sumyyah’s contribution to the “Women in Industry, Today and Tomorrow…” issue of the Career and Adult Development Journal (CADJ), be her personal story.  Sumyyah came of age and professionally prospered in a much different age than that of her foremothers.  Like one of my other African American heroines, Shirley Chisholm, the phrase, “Can’t be done,” is not in Sumyyah’s vocabulary.

FEMALE AND AFRICAN AMERICAN, A History and a Career Path.."the Circle of my life"

I hesitated to write this, but through Carol’s encouragement, I am writing about the circle of my life.
We all have a circle of life…as I write this, it comes more clear to me how the experiences I will share with you have impacted my circle and have caused me to be the person I am today.

My Circle…

Being born in Birmingham, Alabama during the height of segregation in the 1940’s was a time when the Southern section of our country was in a state between post slavery and the end of World War II.

As I became conscious of this over the past years, I have realized that I was blessed to have been exposed to the experiences that the time and place of my birth offered me. As a child I knew that we were under a deeply oppressed environment, while at the same time there was a dignity among my people that transcended the oppression we experienced.

I was blessed to have a grandmother who constantly told me how smart and intelligent I was. She allowed me to discuss issues with her from religion to politics. She was very political and was always a Republican! She became a voter in Birmingham pre the civil rights movement.
I remember when she went to the court house to take the voting test. Boy, had she prepared for it! She basically had to remember the entire Constitution of the United States in order to past the voting test. As most of you are aware, pre the voting rights act, African Americans in the segregated south were not allowed to vote unless they passed an extremely difficult test. Well she passed it!