Honors and Awards
• Abraham L. Davis, who recently retired as a professor of political science at Morehouse College, received the Samella Lewis Professional Achievement Award from the Ohio State University Alumni Association.
• The late Bernett L. Johnson Jr. was professor of dermatology and pathology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Now, a health center located at Sayre High School in West Philadelphia will be named in his honor.
Dr. Johnson, who died in 2009, was a graduate of Virginia Union University and Meharry Medical College.
• Rita S. Geier, associate to the chancellor and senior fellow at the Howard Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee, received the Woman of Legend and Merit Award in Education from the Tennessee State University Women’s Center.
A graduate of Fisk University, Geier holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Vanderbilt University.
In 1968 Geier was a 23-year-old faculty member at historically black Tennessee State University when she filed a federal lawsuit against the state system of higher education. Eventually the suit was settled and the Geier Consent Decree provided $77 million for efforts to desegregate the state’s university system.
• Deryl Bailey, an associate professor of counseling and human development services at the University of Georgia, received the 2010 Reese House Social Justice Advocate of the Year award from the Counselors for Social Justice of the American Counseling Association.
Dr. Bailey has been on the University of Georgia faculty since 1999. He holds a doctorate in counselor education from the University of Virginia.
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