“I applaud people like Barbara Margolis … who try to make a difference in people’s lives,” wrote former Deputy Warden Thomas Coppolino in his memoir, Rikers Island: Freedom From Within (Xulon Press, 2014).
Barbara Margolis (née Schneider) ’51 (1929–2009), who majored in retail management (then retailing) at Simmons, became one of the nation’s most beloved prisoners’ rights advocates. Margolis developed rehabilitation and career-transition programs for male inmates at Rikers Island, the world’s largest penal complex (situated within the Bronx and accessible via a girder bridge in Queens). Her commitment to social justice was reparative in nature. Rejecting a punitive approach to incarcerated individuals, Margolis chose to nurture inmates’ capacity for advancement, vocationally and holistically.
An Unlikely Advocate
During her undergraduate years at Simmons, Barbara Schneider — nicknamed Bobbie — served on the “business team” staff for the student newspaper, The Simmons News (now The Simmons Voice). She and her fellow students covered local politics, residential campus life, student theatrical productions, fundraising activities, military training for women, athletics, and beyond. In 1950, The Simmons News reported that Schneider planned to organize a Simmons program on WHDH with the famous radio announcer and disc jockey Bob Clayton, during which students were to poll their top ten favorite songs and offer concluding commentary.
The 1951 issue of Microcosm (Simmons’ yearbook) lists her numerous co-curricular activities: the Hillel Club, Outing Club, Scribunal (a collective in which Retailing students socialized with professors), and Prince Club (a recreational subsidiary of the Prince School of Retailing, named after trailblazing saleswoman Lucinda W. Prince). The same yearbook succinctly encapsulated Schneider’s demeanor: “Always smiling, always friendly — that’s Bobby [Bobbie].”
A few years following her Simmons graduation, she married David I. Margolis, an industrialist and Chairman of Colt Industries. In 1959, the couple moved to New York City, where David Margolis became a trusted advisor and close friend of Mayor Ed Koch. For an annual salary of $1, Barbara Margolis served as NYC’s official greeter during the Koch administration (1978–1989). In this role, she welcomed luminous dignitaries visiting the city, including Pope Jean Paul II and Princess Diana of Wales.
Margolis’ signature achievement was her volunteer work at Rikers Island, a vast, 413-acre prison complex. Historically, Rikers — which averages about 10,000 inmates — was reputed to have a violent, abusive, and negligent atmosphere. However, Margolis innovated and implemented rehabilitative programs that involved culinary education, athletics, horticulture, and journalism.
Curiously, Margolis’ colleagues and family members could not recall or understand why she was motivated to work with incarcerated populations. Married to a former CEO of a Fortune 500 company and cavorting with New York’s elite society, she seemed like an unlikely prison advocate. In fact, she often arrived at Rikers in a limousine.
When announcing Margolis as the city’s new greeter, The New York Times described her as “an elegant-looking woman with a cultured Boston accent who stands 5 feet 6 inches, weighs 112 pounds, and wears her brown hair pulled back in a French twist … some people have told Mrs. Margolis she resembles the late actress, Joan Crawford.” Whatever the reason for her involvement with Rikers, Margolis clearly believed in humankind’s capacity for change and recovery.
Doing Time with Dignity
Margolis’ most celebrated intervention is Fresh Start, which launched at Rikers in 1989. With a goal toward rehabilitation and career transition, this program allows incarcerated individuals to receive culinary training from professional chefs. Participants engage in a 10-week program for eight hours per day, during which they learn a full repertoire of restaurant-related work (e.g., food preparation, table service, and dishwasher repair).
Fresh Start, which Margolis managed until 1997, brought some of the city’s finest chefs to support Rikers inmates, transforming them into budding sommeliers and haute cuisine craftsmen. Margolis and her expert team deftly navigated wine tasting and culinary knife skills within a regulated prison environment. Fresh Start participants prepared a splendid array of culinary delights, including saffron mussel soup, steak au poivre, and chocolate souffle.
One important outcome of the program is that it substantially improved the phenomenon of recidivism, or the rate at which formerly incarcerated individuals return to prison. In 1993, Margolis told The New York Times that “most of the men [released from Rikers Island], if they knew how, would not go back.” By the time Margolis retired, recidivism — specifically for former Rikers inmates who graduated from Fresh Start — declined from about 80 percent to approximately 35 percent.
Commentary from Fresh Start participants under Margolis’ charge reveals how they reclaimed a sense of purpose. As Larry Blount conveyed to The New York Times in 1993, “This makes our day …This tells me about other things in life besides what’s going on in the street. This time I’m going to try to get into this profession.” Melvin Brown, a fellow 1990s participant, told the newspaper, “This is the only skill I have, so it’s where I’m headed. I have a choice now. All the other times I got released, my intentions were good, but the only place I was accepted was back on the corner. With this [specialized and rehabilitative training], I know I’ll start as a dishwasher, but I don't have to stay there.”
In 1997, Osborne Association, a nonprofit prison reform organization, began administering and expanding Fresh Start. Thanks to a partnership with NYC’s Department of Correction that formed in 2001, today’s Fresh Start participants prepare dozens of Thanksgiving turkeys for local churches to support people experiencing homelessness. “It’s a good feeling to be able to nourish someone,” (then) Fresh Start participant/Rikers inmate Richard Powell told The New York Times in 2011.
According to Jennifer Wynn, who served as Director of Fresh Start from 2004 to 2007, Margolis maintained a perpetual commitment to Fresh Start alumni. She took late night phone calls from them and attended their weddings, always gratified to witness graduates’ personal and professional triumphs. Wynn’s book, Inside Rikers: Stories from the World’s Largest Penal Colony (St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2002), recounts how Margolis once told her: “I had the thrill of sending a Fresh Start graduate a wedding present … Can you imagine — sending a Fresh Start graduate a wedding gift?”
Many other programs that Margolis developed for Rikers are still in operation under the auspices of the Horticulture Society of New York. In 1980, she helped resuscitate a publication written by and for inmates, The Rikers Review, a magazine that covers literature, journalism, and advice.
One of Margolis’ last significant projects at Rikers was funding and realizing a prison garden. Known as GreenHouse, the prison garden enabled her to socialize with inmates while they learned to grow their own organic vegetables and herbs. Today, this beloved sanctuary teems with flowers, butterflies, and birds.
Although Rikers is expected to close in 2026, inmates and staff will miss the sanctuary of the prison garden. According to a 2019 New York Times article on GreenHouse, “For more than 500 incarcerated men and women who enter them each year, the gardens are a tranquil refuge from the chaos of jail.”
Moreover, Rikers administrators have observed that GreenHouse improves inmates’ mental health and overall wellness. The garden’s tranquility also helps Rikers guards cope with the stress of their jobs. Officer Ronald Wells told the Times: “[In the garden] I talk to them [Rikers’ inmates] about their goals, their problems. It allows you to come out of just being a correctional officer and relate to people as human beings.”
Throughout her career and volunteerism, Margolis served on numerous organizational boards, including the New York City Board of Correction, the Vera Institute of Justice, and the New York City Criminal Justice Agency. She was also one of the founding members of CorrectionsHistory.org, a website devoted to the history of New York’s prisons.
Predecessor of Prison Reform: A Simmons Connection
Although their lifespans did not overlap chronologically, Margolis’ commitment to prison reform may be juxtaposed with that of Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802–1887), another woman connected to the history of Simmons. Appalled by the criminalization, incarceration, and inhumane treatment of mentally ill and indigent individuals, Dix dedicated herself to marginalized and misunderstood populations. During the Civil War, she also helped recruit Union nurses. Through her compassion, care, and advocacy, Dix eventually became known as “the American Florence Nightingale.”
In her book, Dorothea Dix: Advocate for Mental Health Care (Oxford University Press, 2004), Margaret Muckenhoupt writes,“[Dix] insisted that the government had an obligation to aid its most helpless citizens and that everyone — including prisoners, the poor, and people with mental illness — had a right to be treated with dignity.” Moreover, as Muckenhoupt surmises, “If Dorothea Dix were alive today, she would be at the White House, lobbying for the resources to keep people with mental illness out of prison and in treatment programs.”
In 1844, Dix publicly critiqued the appalling treatment of Abram Simmons, a mentally ill man and cousin to John Simmons. Abrams suffered a cruel death in a cold, neglected cell in Little Compton, Rhode Island — the very place where John Simmons was born. In her biography, John Simmons: The Measure of a Man (No Small Matters Press, 2014), Denise Doherty Pappas ’71, ’85MBA theorizes that Dix’s commitment to social justice may have influenced John Simmons’ decision to establish a female college.
Although Dix passed away before Simmons Female College opened, she is integrally connected to its early history. She supported women’s right to higher education and her will stipulated for funds to be set aside for the College. In his 1945 book, Delayed by Fire: Being the Early History of Simmons College (reprinted by Forgotten Books, 2018), Professor Emeritus of Chemistry Kenneth Lamartine Mark wrote: “Most important of these [financial aid] sources was the Dorothea L. Dix Fund [of $50,000], administered by Mr. Horatio A. Lamb [Treasurer of the College and a friend of Dix].”
Simmons’ on-the-ground adult learners program, which has been in operation for over sixty years, was reconsecrated as the Dix Scholars program in 1993. This renaming commemorates Dix’s support of women’s education and preparation for service professions.
Within this broader historical narrative, Margolis — figuratively speaking — followed in the footsteps of Dix. Though they practiced different methods of reform, both women aimed to relieve unjust suffering and to elevate the marginalized.
A Legacy of Care and Compassion
Barbara Margolis passed away on July 3, 2009 in Manhattan, due to complications from cancer. Her memory remains embedded in the hearts of the many Rikers colleagues and inmates that she inspired.
According to her obituary published in The New York Times, Margolis commanded admiration and respect: “To those who knew her, Mrs. Margolis was so utterly at home at Rikers that it seemed simply as if she had always been on the island … Perhaps the greatest sign of the esteem in which Mrs. Margolis was held came from the prisoners themselves. Frank Guzman, a Fresh Start alumnus who now earns his living as a trucker, recalled … that inmates once stole her car from the Rikers parking lot. When they found out whose it was, they returned it at once.”
In concert with Simmons University’s vision of social justice, Margolis dedicated her life’s work to serving oppressed populations, leaving this world better than when she found it.