Written by:
Maria Hernandez
About:
Virginia Collins
February 15th, 2005
In 1915 Virginia Young Collins was born in Plaquemines Parish just south of New Orleans. In those times they considered her family as “real radical.” Her father started of as a porter-embalmer, then a rag man, and ended up as an insurance salesman. He was also a minister and admirer of Marcus Garvey. The young family strongly believed in education. As a result Collins, the eldest of fifteen children, graduated from McDonogh 35 High School and later was educated as a schoolteacher and nurse.
In 1938 Collins became involved in the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW), a group of interracial southerners fighting for social, racial, and economic justice. When Collins went to the initial SCHW meeting, she was living in Iberville Parish with her husband. Collins worked as a home demonstration agent. When she visited the homes of white farmers and sharecroppers, she realized that whites were as illiterate as blacks. Through that experience she came to believe that with a higher quality education whites would begin to understand blacks and would stop believing harmful racial myths.
Collins later got involved in the educational branch of the SCHW. She then joined the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and many other women’s organizations and community groups that promoted quality education for black children, political power through the vote, and equal access to public accommodations. One example of her organizing work during the civil rights movement is her assistance with the Youth Voter Crusader Corps. This group, organized in summer 1963 as part of the Citizens Committee of Greater New Orleans, involved more than 300 students doing door-to-door voter registration that resulted in over 1,000 blacks attempting to register to vote by October, 1963. As a parent, continued her father’s concern with education and organizing when she became a leader in black parent-teacher associations.
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Collins changed her name to Dara Abubakari and became involved with the Republic of New Africa, for which she served as Vice President of the South. As part of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa, she continued the struggle for racial and economic justice that she began in her early 20’s, now fighting for land and nationhood for Black people in America.