Rutgers gymnastics coach Umme Salim-Beasley advocates for change, inspired by her activist grandfather

During the early hours of a misty November morning in 1965, Reginald Hawkins woke to an ear-splitting crash. His house had been bombed.

Hawkins, a dentist, had become one of Charlotte, North Carolina’s most outspoken civil rights activists, making him a target. The FBI never identified a suspect or motive for the attack, and there were no reported injuries. The strike, however, left a lasting impact on the Hawkins family.

“I think back when I was a little girl running around in North Carolina, not really realizing the significance of the house that they [her grandparents] lived in being bombed,” his granddaughter Umme Salim-Beasley, coach of the Rutgers University gymnastics team, said. Hawkins died in 2007. “You get older and realize how significant all of those stories were, tied in with key moments in history, that you really become fascinated with what he did.

“That, I think, is when I noticed that he’s more than just Grandpa.”

Hawkins’ efforts touched countless lives, especially Salim-Beasley’s. As coach, she is using her decades of experience to advance opportunities for Black gymnasts.

“I think that he would be extremely proud to see what I’ve been able to achieve,” she said. “But I also hear his voice in my head saying, ‘You can do more. You can do more. There’s always more to be done.’ ”

Whether she was racing through the halls of her grandparents’ house or flipping around her bedroom in Maryland, Salim-Beasley remembers a childhood full of activity. Hoping to channel this unbridled energy, her parents enrolled her in gymnastics, a sport she took to naturally.

Salim-Beasley quickly ascended the levels of elite gymnastics, becoming a two-time national qualifier. And she could frequently count on her grandfather to travel more than 500 miles from North Carolina to cheer her on.

“I think that he loved every minute of seeing me out competing and being one of the few Black gymnasts that was out there, because it was just nothing that you really saw,” she said. “He was always pushing the boundaries.”

Hawkins fought for the desegregation of Charlotte schools and hospitals in the 1950s and 1960s. Labeled “militant” by the Charlotte Observer, he leveraged media attention and public opinion to force progress.

Fellow civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. pledged to support Hawkins in his run for North Carolina governor in 1968. With his candidacy, Hawkins became the first African American to run for statewide office since Reconstruction. In April 1968, King planned to meet Hawkins in Greensboro, North Carolina, to support his campaign but canceled the trip to focus on protests in Memphis, Tennessee.

Two days later, King was assassinated.

“Going through the civil rights movement, a lot of what was happening was being suppressed through fear,” Salim-Beasley said. “People not going out to vote — they were not doing it because they were fearful of their lives.”

According to a 2004 article in The North Carolina Historical Review, “[i]n his gubernatorial campaigns in 1968 and 1972, Hawkins sought to show African Americans that high political office and a dedication to public civil rights advocacy were not exclusive features in black leadership.”

Salim-Beasley’s gymnastic talents drew the interest of collegiate programs across the country. While considering schools, she attended a college fair at historically Black Howard University, one of her grandfather’s alma maters.

“My grandfather really pushed all of us to get as much education as we possibly could,” Salim-Beasley said, “because when you get educated, then you have the knowledge, and knowledge is power.”

Hawkins started his studies at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, where he participated in his first public protest as president of the student council and graduated with a bachelor’s degree. He continued training in civic engagement while earning a degree in dentistry from Howard, and returned to Johnson C. Smith, earned his master of divinity and became an ordained minister.

Interested in becoming a Howard Bison like her grandfather, Salim-Beasley talked to recruiters and asked about gymnastics.

“They said, ‘We don’t have that white sport here,’ ” Salim-Beasley remembered. “I was like, ‘Why are they laughing?’ Here I am. I’m a brown girl, and I do gymnastics.”

What Salim-Beasley didn’t know was that no historically Black colleges or universities offered gymnastics.

“From that moment,” she said, “I was like, ‘Wow, there needs to be college gymnastics at HBCUs.’ ”

Salim-Beasley ultimately chose West Virginia University, a school close to home with an up-and-coming program that would give her the opportunity to shine. As a freshman, she was named Atlantic-10 Rookie of the Year. By her senior season, she was ranked fifth-best gymnast in the country, claiming the East Atlantic Gymnastics League all-around, bar and beam titles.

With her grandfather’s emphasis on education in mind, Salim-Beasley studied to become a teacher. She spent several years in the classroom before coaching seriously crossed her mind.

One day, as she waited for her daughter to finish preschool class, Salim-Beasley said, another parent approached her. The parent explained that three local high schools were going to lose their gymnastics programs because of a shortage of coaches. Soon after, Salim-Beasley officially returned to the gym.

In 2012, she began coaching full time as an assistant at Rutgers before she was hired as the Temple University women’s gymnastics coach three years later. While heading the program, Salim-Beasley realized she could truly start shaping a new era in collegiate gymnastics.

“A lot of people thought that Temple was an HBCU because I had so many brown gymnasts on the team,” she said. “Recruiting a diverse team, I think, created a lot of exposure.”

Salim-Beasley’s squad attracted the attention of Derrin Moore, founder of Brown Girls Do Gymnastics, which works to increase diversity in the sport. While Salim-Beasley had decided to continue gymnastics over attending an HBCU, she says Moore chose the opposite. Together, they began working toward a future in which HBCUs had a role in creating the next generation of Black gymnasts.

First, they connected with schools that operated gymnastics programs on smaller budgets to learn what was possible with limited funds. Then they started reaching out to HBCUs to pitch their plan.

While Salim-Beasley points to Moore as the visionary, her own influence cannot be understated.

“Sometimes when it’s an email coming from a Black coach that’s already coaching in the sport collegiately, athletic directors take notice,” she said.

“It was just getting one. One university to say ‘Yes, we’ll do it.’ ”

In February 2022, Fisk University became the first HBCU to offer a gymnastics program.

“I said, ‘I promise you that this is going to be huge, because it has never been done before,’ ” Salim-Beasley said of her conversations with school leadership. And she was right. Fisk captivated fans in its inaugural season, attracting media attention and enthusiastic crowds. Fisk’s appearance at Rutgers became the Scarlet Knights’ highest-attended gymnastics meet.

“That’s really what jump-started everything,” Salim-Beasley said.

One year later, Talladega College in Alabama announced plans to launch a gymnastics team, making it the second HBCU gymnastics team. The Tornadoes debuted this season and joined Fisk at a University of Florida quad meet in January.

But Salim-Beasley knows her work is just beginning. With an eye on expansion, she has two goals: bring gymnastics to more schools in the NAIA, the athletic organization to which Fisk and Talladega belong; and introduce the sport to HBCUs in the NCAA. The two goals, when reached, will maximize opportunities for Black gymnasts to participate in collegiate competition as part of an HBCU community.

“There’s other universities — conferences actually — that are interested in adding gymnastics, so I think the ball will just continue to roll,” she said. “Gymnastics at HBCUs is going to grow even more in the next five to 10 years.”

Like her grandfather, Salim-Beasley has also found herself speaking up at the political level.

In fall 2023, she joined U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes of Ohio, a former competitive gymnast herself, for a panel on public policy solutions for Black gymnasts. Salim-Beasley said conversation focused on concrete objectives, such as increasing access to funding and facilities. But the discussion also addressed the more nuanced issue of perception.

From Dianne Durham and Dominique Dawes to Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles, talented Black gymnasts have been dominating the sport for decades. Yet as more Black athletes enter the sport, Salim-Beasley has already identified the next challenge, saying: “How do we educate people about this sport when there may be stigmas attached to Black gymnasts?”

Fortunately, counsel always remains close at hand.

“There’s times where I’ll be like, ‘What would grandpa do? What would grandpa say?’ ” she said. “And that’s really my motivation.”