Barbara Collins Bowie was born in 1947 Jackson, Mississippi, where she endured the oppression of those times throughout her childhood and adult life. Barbara got involved with the Civil Rights movement at the early age of 13, inspired by her brother, a Freedom Rider. Barbara became a Licensed Vocational Nurse in 1969 and started out her nursing career in Neonatal JCU at Christus Santa Rosa Medical Center. In 1994 Barbara became a published poet-writer and established the Bowie Foundation "Arts in Focus" After School Program, devoting her life to helping youth realize their artistic abilities early in life and use the fine arts as an outlet and alternative to negative behavior. The Dr. Bowie Scholarship Foundation, named in honor of her late husband, Dr. Jesse Bowie, provides performing arts after school and summer programs, educational and community events and many other services for youth and their families in both Bexar and Wilson counties. In 2015 Mrs. Bowie created and introduced a Proclamation for the first Dr. Bowie Foundation Freedom Riders' "Passing of the Torch" Ceremony, with honored recipient, Commissioner Tommy Calvert, Jr., at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. This program, slated to be presented annually in the City of San Antonio and other cities across the nation, presents a symbolic Torch of Education, Unity, Peace and Love, to a qualified youth, individual and/or organization, in an effort to encourage future generations to use the powerful stories of the Freedom Riders to maintain awareness of the continued peaceful pursuit of freedom, justice and racial equality in our nation and the world.