Melinda Micco
December 21, 1947 - December 5, 2021
Melinda Micco, Professor Emerita of Mills College and alumna of the University of California at Berkeley, whose primary work explored the intersection of Seminole Indians and African Freedmen in Oklahoma, died on Sunday December 5th, surrounded by family, in Oakland, California. She was 73 years old.
Melinda Micco was born in Richmond, California on December 21, 1947 to Harry and Frankie Coker. She was a registered tribal member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the second eldest of four daughters. She moved to San Mateo in middle school and graduated from Aragon High School, one of only two people of color, in 1966. She married, had two children, and only after getting divorced did she consider continuing her education. Despite being offered admission to numerous Ivy League institutions, she chose U.C. Berkeley for its proximity to family. Melinda returned to school at the University of California at Berkeley as a single mother at the age of 39 and excelled academically. She earned a BA, MA, and PhD in Ethnic and Native American studies, and graduated with three degrees, with honors, in less than seven years.
After graduation from Berkeley in the spring of 1993 she was hired at Mills College as All But Dissertation (ABD) which she had to complete in order to begin her tenure track position in the fall. She completed her dissertation in just under three months at a time when the national average was 8.2 years. When she arrived at Mills there were only a handful of faculty of color and she was the only American Indian faculty member. In 1994, Melinda became Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department and the first Native American woman tenured since the school founding in 1852.
Melinda’s early scholarship focused on the often overlooked intersection between American Indian and African American histories. She conducted numerous oral history interviews with Seminole leaders to uncover the history of the Black Seminoles and published an important work “Blood and Money”: The Case of Seminole Freedmen and Seminole Indians in Oklahoma based on these interviews. She later became interested in violence against women and women’s spiritual activism, and co-directed a film about the forced sterilization of Native American women entitled “Killing the 7th Generation: Reproductive Abuses Against Native Women.” She also founded the Brave Hearted Women Conference and was a founding member of Idle No More, a group of grandmothers who lead environmental justice and spiritual activism movements and worked to raise awareness about the health impacts of the Richmond refinery corridor.
Melinda was a featured speaker at Oxford, the Smithsonian, Harvard, U.C. Berkeley, the De Young, and many other prestigious institutions. What is most noteworthy however was her ability to weather extreme hardship and remain bright and positive. She was a staunch advocate for and mentor of female scholars of color. She focused on inclusivity within the context of higher education and was one of the first educators to incorporate different learning styles into her pedagogy to accommodate and celebrate neurodiversity.
Melinda was a guiding light and mentor to many women of color over her storied career, but beyond her academic and social advocacy work, she was a friend, sister, daughter, mother, and grandmother. Melinda was loyal, fierce, witty, irreverent, compassionate, and more than anything else, loving and deeply loved by her close family and friends. There is no greater testament to a life well lived, than the love of others left behind. She is survived by her son Sean, daughter Megan, grandchildren Finlay and Sophia, her son-in-law Jeffrey, and her cousin David and his wife Aileen.