JBHE: Latest News for 1/18/07

In Memoriam

Nathan A. Scott Jr. (1925-2006)

Nathan A. Scott Jr., a noted religious scholar, died late last month from lung cancer in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was 81 years old.

Dr. Scott was a native of Detroit and was a graduate of the University of Michigan. He studied at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. An ordained Episcopal minister, Scott earned his doctorate at Columbia University. After teaching at Howard University for several years, in 1955 Scott joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Divinity School. He remained at the university for more than two decades rising to the endowed position of Shailer Mathews Professor of Theology and Literature.

In 1976 Scott was appointed Commonwealth Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. That year, his wife Charlotte was also named to an endowed professorship at the University of Virginia. They were the first two African Americans to be awarded tenure at the university. Nathan Scott remained on the faculty at the University of Virginia for 14 years before his retirement in 1990.

Adele V. Holden (1919-2006)

Adele V. Holden, poet and educator, died of cancer late last year in Baltimore at the age of 87.

Holden grew up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. As a young girl she remembered several lynchings of African Americans that occurred near her home. Her experiences growing up in this racially segregated region inspired her book Down on the Shore: The Family and Place That Forged a Poet’s Voice.

After high school Holden moved to Baltimore and enrolled at what is now Morgan State University. She taught creative writing in Baltimore’s segregated school system and later earned a master’s degree in writing from Johns Hopkins University.

At the end of her teaching career, Holden was on the faculty of Baltimore City Community College. She retired from teaching in 1982 and concentrated on writing poetry and painting.