The FIRM

One thing I’ve come to learn about Reverend Dr. Michelle Simmons is that once she has an idea, she’s going to run all the way down the court with her idea and make it a reality. That’s exactly what happened with the nonprofit she founded called Why Not Prosper, and that‘s the same thing that has happened with her new idea, which has morphed into a museum called The FIRM for short. It actually stands for Formerly Incarcerated Renaissance Museum.
Reverend Dr. Michelle Simmons told me how the concept started. “You know, Thera, God gives me visions all the time. What happened was I said to myself, I want to start and build a legacy. So we had a clubhouse that is located in the back of our headquarters for Why Not Proposer on Chelten Avenue. So, I said, ok God, what does this legacy look like? My first vision was to do a big Prosper Park where we would lift up women and things of that nature. But with the red tape and all of that, I couldn’t get the park built. So I was walking down my driveway, and I looked up, and the Lord said, there goes your museum right there. It was the old building (we’ve owned for twenty years) that has been sitting empty behind our headquarters. What we did was transform that building into the first Formerly Incarcerated Renaissance Museum.
Dr. Simmons went on to say, “I wanted to leave a legacy for me, but then I took another look and was reminded that I’m around all these powerful women and all these powerful people across the country. I decided to put out a call to people from all across the country to send me artifacts and materials that I could use on display in the museum that would clearly tell the story of incarcerated individuals. I asked them to send me materials about what they did when they were locked up. I asked them to send me materials on what they did when they got home, and let’s see what this turns into.”
“Automatically, I got a great response,” said Dr. Simmons. “It was really positive, and to be more exact, it was an overwhelming response I got from formerly incarcerated people of things starting to come in.”
Then, for half a second, Dr. Michelle says fear set in, but only for half a second. She picks up the story from there. “I remember saying to myself, Oh God, what am I doing? I ain’t got no money. I ain’t never did a museum. I don’t know what I’m doing. I then called some of my formerly incarcerated women friends and told them we needed to huddle up and formulate a plan. We didn’t even have a name for the museum at that time. I just knew we were going to do a museum. We’re acronym crazy at Why Not Prosper, so we started with an acronym, The FIRM, and ultimately came up with the Formerly Incarcerated Renaissance Museum. We decided what our mission statement would be, and then we decided we needed to hire an artist. The building looked a whole mess, and so we asked for suggestions on what the front of the building would look like and how we would lay the museum out on the inside.”
That was back in February of this year when Dr. Michelle started planning out the actual museum. They officially opened the museum on August 23, 2024. “We got it done in six months, and the museum is absolutely beautiful.“
There are four main sections to the museum, and it is open Mondays through Thursdays, 10 am-2 pm, and we do tours on Saturdays.
The first section of the museum is the foundation. It tells Rev. Dr. Michelle Simmons’ story. It tells why she started Why Not Prosper. It tells how The FIRM came into existence. It tells how Dr. Michelle Simmons birthed SWAG, another arm of Why Not Prosper.
When you turn the corner, you come to the second section of the museum. This section highlights the mothers who held Rev. Michelle Simmons up and helped to raise her. She says these women are now her ancestors. She says she has to give her ancestors credit for who she is today.
The third section of the museum spotlights other sisters from across the country, just like her, who have started movements. One organization she mentioned was The National Council of Incarcerated Women and Girls. Dr. Michelle says she rocks out with them really hard. They do a lot of marches, and they lobby people, in a lot of people’s faces, trying to bring some of our incarcerated sisters home, whom they say should not be locked up.
The fourth section of the museum shares the incarceration wall. This section of the museum speaks to what people did while they were incarcerated. Some people wrote and got books published while they were locked up. There are people who graduated from college while they were locked up. The biggest wall (of all at the museum) in the fourth section is the inspiration wall.
Dr. Simmons commented, “Our theme is “From Incarceration to Inspiration.” We have a whole bunch of my sisters and brothers who have done or are doing amazing things right now. One of the people spotlighted at our museum just recently received a lifetime achievement award from Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden in June. Another sister we spotlight in the museum won a pardon from President Barack Obama after having been incarcerated for twenty-three years. We’ve got another young man featured at the museum who was sentenced to die at the age of fifteen. Where is he today? He’s been named the King of a little village in Ghana, Africa, after he was released from prison. When you turn another corner at our museum–you come to the revolutionary section. That’s where we’re doing work as it relates to policy. We’ve got a lot of reports and a lot of projects that we, as formerly incarcerated persons, have written. We have copies of policies and recommendations of things we’ve gotten changed and so much more.”
Why Not Prosper and The FIRM Museum are located at 717 E. Chelten Avenue in Philadelphia, PA. The phone number for Why Not Prosper is 215-842-2360. Why Not Prosper offers women in distress a hand-up, not a handout. They are a grassroots nonprofit organization founded by formerly incarcerated women. To learn more about Why Not Prosper, log on at www.why-not-prosper.org.