MILDRED NICHOLS
INSPIRING WOMEN TO ENTER THE WORKFORCE AND RUN FOR OFFICE
When ninety-six-year-old Mildred Nichols learned she was a recipient of one of this year’ s Bannister Awards, she was grateful and surprised.
“ I thought it was pretty amazing,” Nichols says.“ My second thought was,‘ I think they’ re being very bold with all the recent attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion, and I love that idea.’ And I said,‘ If they’ re being bold, I’ m going to be bold.’”
Nichols was nominated multiple times over the years due to her remarkable family history and her vast involvement in politics, policy and education in Rhode Island. She was born in northern Virginia in 1929, the great-grandchild of founding members of the Loudoun County Emancipation Association on her mother’ s side, with her father serving as the association’ s last president. Her paternal great-grandfather’ s freedom papers, along with the tin box he carried them in, are on display at the Smithsonian’ s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her maternal grandmother, Eppie Clark, was one of the first women in Loudoun County to register to vote, and Nichols is proud to maintain a copy of the roll with her name on it, marked with a“ C” for colored. Nichols also graduated as valedictorian in a segregated high school in Leesburg in Loudoun County.
She met her husband, Charles Nichols, while studying at Hampton Institute( now Hampton University) in Virginia. They married two months after she graduated and had two children when they relocated to Germany in 1959. That’ s when Charles became a tenured professor and director of the department of North American literature at the John F. Kennedy Institute for American Studies at the Free University. A decade later, the family— now with three children— moved to Providence when Brown University offered her husband a tenured position in the English Department. He became the founding director of the program in Afro-American studies, now known as the Department of Africana Studies.
Once she moved to Providence, Mildred became active in politics while raising their children, then a college freshman, an eighth grader and a four-year-old. She is one of the founding members of the Rhode Island Women’ s Political Caucus and was a George McGovern delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. She was later elected to the Democratic National Committee, while inspiring more women to run for office.
Back then, a news reporter asked her on camera if she thought her race had anything to do with her appointment to the DNC.“ And I said,‘ No. I don’ t think so. I think I earned this,’” Nichols says with a smile.
Rhode Island governors appointed her to the Economic Development Corporation, the Board of Governors for Higher Education and the Women’ s Commission. Then- President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the National Advisory Council on Adult Education.
Her proudest achievement involves raising three accomplished sons, David, Keith and Brian Nichols, who each lead respective careers in medical, financial and diplomatic fields. But she’ s also proud of leading the charge to integrate displaced homemakers into the workforce. She joined the Career Education Project in 1972, which counseled women by telephone on potential job skills.
Later, she became the director of The Career Counseling Service at the Rhode Island Department of Education. In 1978, she became the director of the Rhode Island Occupational Information Coordinating Committee, aiding anyone making career and job decisions, where she spent the next twenty-two years, until her retirement.
So how did she do it all while raising three kids?“ I was extraordinarily lucky and blessed that I had three healthy children. They were never any trouble to raise,” she says.“ But then some nights here I think,‘ Oh, my goodness, I must have been neglecting them.’”
Quite the contrary, according to a quote about motherhood by author Rochelle B. Weinstein.“ A mother’ s job is to teach her children to not need her anymore. The hardest part of that is accepting success.”— Jamie Coelho
94 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY I OCTOBER 2025