Voices from the Quakers of Color International Archive (QCIA)
A belated Happy International Women’s Day from the BlackQuaker Project (BQP)! In celebration of this global holiday, which has now evolved into Women’s History Month, the BQP honors 5 pioneering women featured in our Quakers of Color International Archive (QCIA). From the USA and Bolivia to South Africa and Palestine, these seeker-activists have emerged as influential figures in Quakerism across education, governance, diplomacy and international relations, and human rights. Their ongoing leadership in the face of widespread institutional failure can serve as an example to Friends pursuing Truth and Justice within our divided societies. Interviews with the following 5 Quaker women leaders of color are among the testimonies you can find online in our QCIA installations at the Haverford College Library and at the UMass Amherst Library.
Joyce Ajlouny
General Secretary, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).
Palestinian American. Bethesda Friends Meeting. Interviewed by Cooper Vaughn.
Born in Ramallah, Palestine, Friend Joyce leads the AFSC in its efforts to bring peace and justice within our domestic and international communities. Under her leadership, the AFSC has established the “Reparative Justice & Healing Fund“ to support Black and Indigenous-led social justice initiatives across the USA; founded the Salama Hub, a research and advocacy center for peace that coordinates with civil society organizations in East Africa; and recently developed the “Love As Action” initiative, calling on Friends’ meetings to hold silent vigils protesting USA militarism and imperialism while providing guidance for Friends seeking to mobilize their communities in non-violent protest. For the past three years, she has worked tirelessly to lead the AFSC in responding to the genocide in occupied Palestine: by the spring of 2024, the AFSC had provided humanitarian aid, including food and clean drinking water, to over 400,000 people in the Gaza Strip. She has also pushed for educational institutions to divest from Israel, whose genocide would not be possible without the support of the USA government, military-industrial complex, and the administrations of many of our elite colleges and universities. The BQP remains grateful for the AFSC’s and Joyce’s sponsorship of our BlackQuaker Lives Matter Film Festival and Forum.
In this one case, please contact hc-special@haverford.edu to request access to Friend Joyce’s videotaped and transcribed QCIA interview.
Lauren Brownlee
Deputy General Secretary, Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL).
African American. Bethesda Friends Meeting. Interviewed by Cooper Vaughn.
A longtime educator turned policy advocate, Friend Lauren helps lead FCNL during a time when voices speaking truth to power have largely been silenced within the USA capitol. Among her activities are helping to oversee FCNL’s campaign for an end to the genocide in Gaza, which has seen the lobby take 500 visits to capitol hill and coordinate with Quakers around the world to send over 730,000 letters to congress calling for a ceasefire and humantirian aid. Lauren also leads FCNL’s Governance, Community, and Culture team, who are responsible for guiding the lobby’s commitments to Anti-racism, Anti-bias, Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (AJEDI). She recently helped coordinate the lobby’s efforts to mitigate the harms of “The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” collaborating with various faith communities to delay and reduce the catastrophic effects of the bill however possible. Lauren serves on the AFSC corporation and board, as well as the steering committees of Quaker Call to Action and Quakers for Peace in Palestine and Israel. She is co-clerk of the Quaker Coalition for Uprooting Racism steering committee, which trains and sponsors cadres of emerging justice practitioners on a yearly basis. She is also the co-clerk of AFSC’s Community, Equity, and Justice Board Committee.
To view Friend Lauren’s videotaped and transcribed QCIA interview, please click here.
Ayesha Imani
CEO of Sankofa Freedom Academy. Co-founder of Ujima Friends Meeting and Peace Center African American. Ujima Friends Meeting and Chestnut Hill Monthly Meeting. Interviewed by Emma Lapsansky-Werner.
A pioneering voice for African American Quakers within the Religious Society of Friends, Friend Ayesha was a founding member of the Fellowship of Friends of African Descent in 1990 and in 2016 co-founded Ujima Friends Meeting, an Afro-centric monthly meeting that worships in North Philadelphia. A lifelong educator, Ayesha taught in Philadelphia public schools for over three decades. She co-created, with Friend Phil Lord, the Ujima Friends Peace Center as an outreach ministry which offers spiritually nourishing educational programs to local youth with a focus on literacy, conflict resolution, and environmental stewardship. Inspired by her son’s desire to share the values and methods of Quaker education with the wider Philadelphia community, Ayesha founded the Sankofa Freedom Academy Charter School, which draws on the methodologies of private Friends schools and the grassroots educational programs of the Civil Rights Movement to provide a K-12 college preparatory program for predominantly Black and Brown youth.
To view Friend Ayesha’s videotaped and transcribed QCIA interview, please click here.
Emma Condori Mamani
Director, Friends International Bilingual Center, La Paz, Bolivia. Author, Educator, and Scholar. Indigenous Bolivian (Aymaran). Bella Vista Friends Church. Interviewed by Harold D. Weaver Jr.
Born into an Aymara family in the highlands of Bolivia, Friend Emma advocates for the needs of indigenous Bolivian Friends whose rural communities currently endure the increasingly catastrophic effects of climate change. In 2017 she authored the book, Quakers in Bolivia: The Early History of Bolivian Friends, which charts the history and growth of the Indigenous Aymara Quaker community in Bolivia. As director of the Friends International Bilingual Center she oversees language classes in English, Spanish, and Aymaran; offers educational programs to children and adults; and provides food to families living in the Bolivian highlands facing droughts.
To view Friend Emma’s videotaped and transcribed QCIA interview, please click here.
Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge
South African Anti-Apartheid Activist; Former Deputy Minister of Health and Former Deputy Minister of Defense, Government of South Africa. Former Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly. Director, Embrace Dignity. South African. Cape Western Monthly Meeting. Interviewed by Harold D. Weaver Jr.
A key anti-apartheid figure, Friend Nozizwe was one of the few women involved in negotiating South Africa’s transition from white-minority rule to democratic governance by a de-segregated parliament. In 1999 she was appointed Deputy Minister of Defence and worked, in consultation with local Quakers, to steer South Africa’s National Defense Force towards development and peacekeeping, rather than militarism. In 2004 she became Deputy Minister of Health and challenged her President’s denial of the HIV-AIDS pandemic and refusal to distribute life-saving, anti-retroviral drugs. Now, with her non-profit, Embrace Dignity, she continues the fight for women’s total emancipation by helping to end commercial sexual exploitation through law, including their recent push for South Africa’s parliament to adopt the Sankara Equality Model Law, which criminalizes sex buyers and exploiters but not those who are sold. Since 2020 Friend Nozizwe has collaborated closely with the BQP, advocating with Harold D. Weaver Jr. for Retrospective Justice as the Quaker model for healing historical and recent injustice. Their work has taken them around the world, including to the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (London) and the Quaker United Nations Office (Geneva), and, via Zoom, to Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre (UK), Pendle Hill (USA), and the Friends World Committee for Consultation’s 2024 World Plenary Meeting (Johannesburg, South Africa).
To view Friend Nozizwe’s 2-part videotaped and transcribed QCIA interview, please click here (part 1) and here (part 2).
Our QCIA interviews with these 5 Friends and 25 other remarkable Quaker women and men of color are available online at the Haverford College Library’s Quaker & Special Collections and The Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center at the UMass Amherst W.E.B Du Bois Library.
As always, we encourage you to write to us at theblackquakerproject@gmail.com with your questions, insights, and feedback.
Peace and Blessings,
The BlackQuaker Project
Wellesley Friends Meeting,
New England Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers)
www.theblackquakerproject.org
11 March 2026
Friends Association for Higher Education 