E. Patrick Johnson, dean of the School of Communication at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the Annenberg University Professor, recently received the Frederick Douglass Medal presented by the University of Rochester in New York. The Frederick Douglass Medal is a joint initiative of the Office of the President and the Frederick Douglass Institute established in 2008 at the University of Rochester to honor individuals of outstanding achievement whose scholarship and community engagement honor the legacy of Frederick Douglass.
Professor Johnson was honored for his scholarship and community engagement in the field of Black studies. Dr. Johnson is the award-winning author of two books Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Duke University Press, 2003) and Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History (University of North Carolina Press, 2008).
Dr. Johnson has been on the faculty at Northwestern for more than two decades. Earlier, this year, he was awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award from the National Communication Association, the organization’s highest honor.
Professor Johnson holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in speech communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned a Ph.D. in speech communication at Louisiana State University.
