The College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro has announced that Jelani M. Favors has joined the faculty as the Henry E. Frye Distinguished Professor. The endowed chair is named for an American judge and politician who served as the first African American chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. Judge Frye and his wife, Shirley, are graduates of North Carolina A&T State University and established the endowed faculty position.
Dr. Favors was an associate professor of history at Clayton State University in Morrow, Georgia. He is the author of Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). The book examines the role that HBCUs played as a refuge for minorities during the Jim Crow era. For this book, Dr. Favors won the 2020 Stone Book Award presented annually by the Museum of African American History in Boston and the 2020 Lillian Smith Book Award from the University of Georgia Libraries and the Southern Regional Council.
Dr. Favors is a native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history at North Carolina A&T State University. He holds a master’s degree in African American studies and a Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University.
