Now, nearly nine years after the death of one of the most prolific and respected historians of the twentieth century, a section of Interstate 85 near Durham, North Carolina, has been designated the Dr. John H. Franklin Highway.
The honorees are Shelly Haley, professor of classics and professor of Africana studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and Eric A. Stewart, a professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University.
Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, announced that it will rename its College of Media, Arts and Humanities after Gwen Ifill, the noted journalist and Simmons College alumna who died in 2016.
Earlier this month a new statue of Benjamin E. Mays, the educator and civil rights leader was unveiled at the Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Historical Preservation Site near Epworth, South Carolina, near where Dr. Mays was born. Dr Mays was president of Morehouse College from 1940 to 1967.
The honorees are Wayne A.I. Frederick, president of Howard University, George C. Hill, professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and Roderick L. Ireland, a Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University in Boston.
Ladee Hubbard, who teaches in the Africana studies program at Tulane University in New Orleans, is being honored for her debut novel The Talented Ribkins, the story of an African American family whose members have unique superpowers.
Cornelius Adewale, a doctoral student in the School of the Environment at Washington State University, is working on improving the environmental impact of agriculture. He hopes to develop methods to reduce chemical fertilizers but produce more food.
George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, recently named its North Plaza in honor of Roger Wilkins, a civil rights leader, journalist, and a former long-time faculty member at the university. Wilkins died this past March.
Jean Andino, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Arizona State University, received the Educator of the Year Award from the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.
Colson Whitehead won the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for fiction presented by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. The novel has previously won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction, and the Carnegie Medal of Excellence.
June Gary Hopps is the Thomas M. “Jim” Parham Professor of Family and Children Studies in the School of Social Work at the University of Georgia. Earlier she was dean of the Boston College School of Social Work.
Professor Charles Ogletree is having an endowed chair named in his honor at Harvard Law School. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Florida State University was honored for lifetime achievement in dance and Trudier Harris of the University of Alabama has honored for being the first tenured Black faculty member at the College of William and Mary.
The honorees are Barbara Krauthamer of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Chinyere Oparah of Mills College in Oakland, California, Livingston Alexander of the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, and Anthony K. Wutoh of Howard University.
Those presented with awards or who received honors are Torina D. Lewis of Clark Atlanta University, Hank Aaron at the University of Notre Dame, Charles Ogletree of Harvard Law School, Thomas J. Freeman of Texas Southern University, and Wilma Harper Horne at Hampton University.
Julian Randall, a second-year student in the master of fine arts creative writing program at the University of Mississippi, has been selected as the winner of the 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Prize from the Brooklyn, New York-based Cave Canem Foundation.
After a three-year legal battle, in 1956 Autherine Lucy Foster enrolled in a graduate program in education at the University of Alabama. Angry protests by White students ensured. Foster was suspended three days later “for her own safety” and she was later expelled.
Dr. Vivian Pinn was the only woman and the only African American in the 1967 graduating class. She later served for 20 years as director of the Office for Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health. Now, the medical research building at the University of Virginia has been renamed in her honor.
Alabama State University has named its College of Business Administration to honor Percy J. Vaughn Jr. Dr. Vaughn was recruited to establish the College of Business Administration in 1975. He served as dean for 35 years until his retirement in 2010.
The John Hope Franklin Lifetime Achievement Award is given out every five years. The award committee stated that “we cannot conceive of a more deserving candidate. Hine’s career has been deeply active, productive, and consequential.”
Natasha Trethewey, the Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, has been selected to receive the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities. The award comes with an unrestricted $250,000 prize. She will be honored in Pittsburgh on October 18.
Gloria Chuku, chair and professor of Africana studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, received the 2017 Ali Mazrui Award for Scholarship and Research Excellence from the Toyin Falola Annual Conference on African Diaspora. She is the first woman to receive the award.
Ophelia Weeks, who served for more than 30 years on the faculty at Florida International University in Miami, stepped down from her post earlier this year. Now, she has been granted the title of professor emerita. She has not retired. In April she was named president of the University of Liberia in Africa.
Linda Royster Beito, associate dean of arts and sciences at Stillman College in Alabama, will share first prize in the Alabama Writers’ Conclave 2017 Screenwriting Competition. The screenplay deals with civil rights leader T.R.M. Howard’s involvement with the Emmett Till murder case.
Alvia Wardlaw is a professor of art history and director and curator of the University Museum at Texas Southern University in Houston. In 1996, she became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in history at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis has announced that Russell J. Rickford is the winner of the 2016 Hooks National Book Award. The award is given to an author of a book that “best advances an understanding of the American civil rights movement and its legacy.”
The award honors Dr. Marshall Shepherd’s work in rainfall climatology and its effects on urban areas. He will receive the honor at the society’s annual awards banquet on January 10.
Three finalists have been named for the 19th annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize that recognizes the best book on slavery, resistance, and/or abolition published in the preceding year. Only one of the three finalists is African American.
The prize honors an individual who has made lasting scholarly contributions to racial, ethnic and/or religious relations. Dr. Tatum, president emerita of Spelman College in Atlanta, will receive a medal and a $25,000 prize at a ceremony in October 2018.
Elizabeth Catlett is one of the most celebrated sculptors of the twentieth century. The granddaughter of slaves, she was the first African American woman to earn a master of fine arts degree at the University of Iowa.
In 1967 Dorothy J. Phillips became the first African American women to earn an undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. The university has established a fellowship program and an endowed chair in her honor.
The honorees are Em Claire Knowles of Simmons College in Boston, Tressie McMillan Cottom of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and Robert A. Winn of the University of illinois at Chicago.
This past Sunday, Tuskegee University held a chapel service to honor John W. Whittaker, the educational institution’s first chaplain. The service was part of the Whittaker family reunion that took place on campus.
Jacqueline Allen Trimble, chair of the department of languages and literatures at Alabama State University in Montgomery, was named as the recipient of the 2017 Balcones Poetry Prize from the Balcones Center for Creative Writing at Austin Community College.
Ibrahim I. Cissé, the Class of 1922 Career Development Assistant Professor in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will receive $240,000 over the next four years from the Pew Charitable Trusts to support his research.
LaShawn Harris, an associate professor of history at Michigan State University in East Lansing, received the 2017 Philip Taft Prize from the Labor and Working-Class History Association and the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
A native of Chillicothe, Ohio, and a two-time graduate of Ohio University, Joseph Carter Corbin moved to Arkansas in 1872. Three years later he founded the Branch Normal College, which today is the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
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