Walter B. Curry Jr., who teaches online graduate courses in the master of education degree program at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, received the 2019 International African-American Historical and Genealogy Society Book Award. Dr. Curry was recognized at the 2019 African-American Historical and Genealogy Conference in Hyattsville, Maryland.
Dr. Curry was honored for his book The Thompson Family: Untold Stories from the Past (1830-1960). The book includes the stories of African Americans from the Skillet Community of Salley, South Carolina. Among the stories related in the book are those of a slave who purchased his freedom, a relative who served as a cook in the Confederate Army, a young relative who was tragically murdered, and a sharecropper who became a prominent soil conservationist.
Dr. Curry holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from South Carolina State University. He earned a master’s degree in teaching skills and methodologies through Cambridge College in Massachusetts and an educational doctorate from Argosy University, which is based in Sarasota, Florida.
