Honors & Awards

The Lewis Prize is offered annually to recognize a historian for leadership and sustained engagement at the intersection of historical work, public culture, and social justice. The prize is named in memory of John Lewis, the civil rights icon who represented Georgia in the United States House of Representatives for 34 years.

Cynthia Oliver is an award-winning dancemaker, performer, and a professor of dance at the University of Illinois. She also serves as associate vice chancellor for research and innovation in the humanities at the university.

The 2400 block of 4th Street NW in Washington, D.C. has been renamed Lucy Diggs Slowe Way. Slowe was valedictorian of the Howard University Class of 1908 and was the university's first dean of women.

Lisa Harrison, an associate professor and program coordinator for Middle Childhood Education at Ohio University, is the recipient of the John H. Lounsbury Award for Distinguished Service in Middle Level Education from the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE).

Michael Cato, senior vice president and chief information officer at Bowdoin College in Brunswick Maine, is the recipient of the 2021 Diversity, Education, and Inclusion Award from EDUCAUSE, the nonprofit informational technology association.

Wilhelmina Reuben-Cooke was one of the first five Black students to integrate the Duke campus in 1963. She becomes the first Black woman to have a campus building named after her. She joins historian John Hope Franklin and campus architect Julian Abele as having buildings or grounds named after them on the Duke campus.

Tarshia Stanley, dean of the division of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences, and professor of English at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, has been selected as the winner of the Teaching Literature Book Award, an international prize for the best book on teaching literature at the college level. The award is presented biennially by the graduate faculty in English at Idaho State University.

The Society for Epidemiologic Research has announced the establishment of the Sherman A. James Diverse and Inclusive Epidemiology Award. The award will recognize research, teaching, or service by an individual that expands the scope of the field to underrepresented or disadvantaged populations or researchers and that has facilitated greater diversity and inclusiveness.

Merze Tate, the first Black student to earn a bachelor's degree from Western State Teachers College (now Western Michigan University) will have University College - the academic home for exploratory majors - named in her honor.

Dr. Wilkins is senior vice president for health equity and inclusive excellence at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and senior associate dean for health equity and inclusive excellence in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She will be honored during a ceremony at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia on November 4.

Cathy J. Cohen, the David and Mary Winton Green Distinguished Service Professor in the department of political science at the University of Chicago, received the 2021 Hanes Walton, Jr. Career Award from the American Political Science Association. The award honors a political scientist whose lifetime of distinguished scholarship has made significant contributions to the understanding of racial and ethnic politics.

Tenille Gaines is the associate director for counseling in Michigan State University’s Counseling and Psychiatric Services department. She will receive the Harriet Copher Haynes Diversity Leadership Mentoring Award. The award honors “talented mental health professionals of diverse identities who aspire to become counseling center directors.”

Virginia State University has announced new names for four buildings on campus that will now honor Black alumnae. In March 2021, the university announced the removal of the names and signs identifying the four buildings saying the buildings were named for individuals whose past beliefs were not consistent with the beliefs and legacy of Virginia State University. 

Vanderbilt University in Nashville, which expelled Lawson in 1960 for his civil rights activities, will launch the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements. The University of California, Los Angeles, where Lawson has taught for 20 years, is naming a historic building in his honor.

Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, will name a new interdisciplinary academic center for teaching and research on Southern race relations, culture, and politics in honor of late professor of history emeritus Theodore “Ted” Carter DeLaney Jr.

Waverly Duck, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, received the Charles Horton Cooley Book Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Dr. Duck was recognized for co-authoring the book Tacit Racism, which examines the many ways in which racism is coded into the everyday social interactions of Americans.

J. Herman Blake, professor emeritus of sociology and founding provost of Oakes College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and former president of Tougaloo College in Mississippi, was honored for his lifetime achievements in advancing the field of sociology through the positive impact of his work.

Rebecca Wanzo, professor and chair of women, gender, and sexuality studies in the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won two major awards in the field of comic book studies for her book The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging.

Dr. Harrison's research focuses on issues of identity and power in literacy education, paying particular attention to how race, class, and language impact teaching and learning. She advocates for the need for culturally and linguistically diverse texts.

The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis has named Marcia Chatelain, a professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., as the 2020 Hooks National Book Award Winner for her book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America.