How I got to Cranbrook

Simms was the first African American to graduate from Cranbrook Academy of Art, which is known as the cradle of American modernism.

In this clip, he recalls how his fellow students helped him overcome the board's reluctance to allow him to live on campus. The off campus room the school administrators found for him was above a black funeral home.

Though he refers to the painter Zoltan Sepeshy as the first director of Cranbrook, when the school opened in 1932, the president was Eliel Saarinen, the Finnish architect who had designed the buildings, the campus, and the curriculum. 

To get some sense of the atmosphere Simms found at Cranbrook, watch this short video about an exhibition of the work of Saarinen's son Eero, also an architect and Cranbrook graduate, at the academy's museum.