African American Finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are given out in six categories with five finalists in each category. Several of the finalists are African Americans who currently hold academic posts at American colleges and universities.
Yale Bestows Further Honors on the First Black Person to Donate Money to the...
Mary K. Goodman, a Black laundry woman in New Haven, Connecticut, died in 1872. She left her life savings of $5,000 to Yale University to support the education of African American divinity students.
Vanderbilt University Bestows a Further Honor on Its First Black Graduate
The Joseph A. Johnson Jr. Distinguished Leadership Professor Award will honor a faculty member whose contributions to the university have enhanced equity, diversity and inclusion in the university’s academic endeavors.
Prestigious Awards for a Pair of African American Scholars
Donald Mitchell Jr. of Grand Valley State University is being honored at the Ethnographic and Qualitative Research Conference and Saundra Yancy McGuire of Louisiana State University will receive an award from the American Association for Advancement of Science.
Northwestern University Art History Scholar Wins Book Award
Krista A. Thompson, the holder of the Weinberg College Board of Advisers Chair in the department of art history at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, has been selected to receive the the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from the College Art Association.
T. Geronimo Johnson to Receive the 2015 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence
T. Geronimo Johnson, a visiting professor at the Iowa Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa, is being honored by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation for his 2015 novel Welcome to Braggsville.
Two African Americans Selected for Notable Honors
The honorees are William Jelani Cobb, an associate professor of history and director of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, and Christine Grant, a professor of chemical engineering at North Carolina State University.
Cato Laurencin to Receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation
Cato T. Laurencin has been selected by President Obama as one of seven winners of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. He is the only African American among the seven winners of the award this year.
Two African American Women Scholars Honored With Prestigious Awards
The honorees are Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, a professor of dance at Florida State University in Tallahassee and Keisha Blain, an assistant professor of history at the University of Iowa.
Morehouse College Student From Zimbabwe Wins Rhodes Scholarship
Prince Abudu, a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, was awarded one of the Rhodes Scholarships given to students from Zimbabwe. Abudu is the fourth student from Morehouse College to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.
Two African Americans Honored With Major Awards
A. Van Jordan, Presidential Professor at Rutgers University-Newark, is the winner of the 2015 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry and Walter Bumphus, president of the American Association of Community Colleges will be awarded the inaugural Marie Fielder Medal.
Historian Wins Two Book Awards for Her Work on Black Women in Pornography
Mireille Miller-Young, an associate professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has won awards from the American Studies Association and the National Women's Studies Association for her book A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography.
Two African American Scholars Honored With Major Awards
The honorees are Katherine Grace Hendrix, a professor in the department of communication at the University of Memphis and Anthony Reed, an associate professor of English and African American studies at Yale University.
Black Canadian Woman From the University of Pennsylvania Wins a Rhodes Scholarship
Adebisi (Debi) Ogunrinde, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, was awarded one of the 11 Rhodes Scholarships from Canada. She will pursue a master's degree in social anthropology and a master's degree in public policy at the University of Oxford.
Helon Habilia Named Judge of a Prestigious Book Prize Competition
Helon Habila, an associate professor of creative writing in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, has been selected as the judge for the 2016 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.
Notable Honors for Two African American Scholars
The honorees are Don C. Locke, distinguished professor emeritus of counselor education at North Carolina State University and William B. DeLauder, president emeritus of historically Black Delaware State University.
Two Black Scholars Win National Book Awards
Ta-Nehisi Coates won the National Book Award in the nonfiction category. He has taught at MIT and the City University of New York. Robin Coste Lewis, a Provost’s Fellow in the creative writing and literature doctoral program at the University of Southern California, won the National Book Award in the poetry category.
New York University Historian to Be Awarded the Frederick Douglass Book Prize
Ada Ferrer, professor of history and professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies, will be awarded the $25,000 prize for the best book of the year on slavery or abolition that was written in the English language.
Emily Raboteau Wins the International Flash Fiction Competition
Emily Raboteau, a professor of English and creative writing at the City College of New York, won the $20,000 first prize for her 100-word short story entitled "Oysters." It was selected from more than 35,000 entries worldwide.
Four African American Scholars Selected for Prestigious Honors
The honorees are Richard S. Baker of Wayne State University, E. Albert Reece of the University of Maryland, Twyla J. Cummings of the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Jackson T. Wright Jr. of Case Western Reserve University.
Vanderbilt Honors the Man Who Integrated Southeastern Conference Athletics
Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, is establishing the Perry E. Wallace Scholarship to honor the first African American to play a varsity sport in the Southeastern Conference.
Ivelaw Griffith to Be Honored for His Work in International Security Education
Dr. Griffith is a senior fellow at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the former president of Fort Valley State University in Georgia. He is being honored by the William J. Perry Center for Hemisphere Defense Studies in Washington.
University of Maryland to Name Building After Parren J. Mitchell
Parren J. Mitchell, who was the first African American elected to the U.S. Congress from the State of Maryland, successfully sued the University of Maryland in 1950 to gain admission to the graduate program in sociology.
Honors and Awards for African American Scholars
The honorees are Karelle Aiken of Georgia Southern University, Gina Athena Ulysse of Wesleyan University, Adriel A. Hilton of Western Carolina University, author Jacqueline Woodson at CUNY, Carrie Parker-Taylor, the first Black woman at Indiana University, and Karen Faison of Virginia State University.
Honors and Awards for Five Black Scholars
The honorees are the late Clement A. Price of Rutgers University, Thomas H. Epps III of the University of Delaware, James E. Coleman Jr. of Duke University, Ngondi Kamatuka of the University of Kansas, and Sheila Jackson of Mississippi State University.
Indiana University’s Jacinda Townsend Wins Award for Her First Novel
Jacinda Townsend, an associate professor of English at Indiana University, is being honored by the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Rochester.
Three African American Scholars Awarded Notable Honors
The honorees are David Hall, president of the University of the Virgin Islands, Fannie Gaston-Johansson, the first Black woman full professor at Johns Hopkins University, and William Cooley, former dean of the College of Business at Jackson State University.
African American Historian Honored for His Biography of Stokely Carmichael
Peniel E. Joseph, professor of history at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, received the National Book Award from the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis.
Three African American Educators Receive Notable Honors
The honorees are Thomas Calhoun of Jackson State University, Conella Coulter Brown, one of the first Black students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and James Franklin Densler of the Morehouse School of Medicine.
Toni Morrison Awarded the UCLA Medal
Toni Morrison, professor emerita at Princeton University, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. In 1993, she was the first African American woman to win a Nobel Prize. On October 5, she received the UCLA Medal for "distinguished academic and professional achievement."
Honors and Awards for Four African American Scholars
The honorees are Harold Franklin, the first Black student at Auburn University, the late Ella Lee Kelley of Southern University, Patrick Hawkins of the College of Nursing at Michigan State University, and Keith Whitfield of Duke University.
Honors and Awards for African Americans in Higher Education
The honorees are Twyla J. Cummings of the Rochester Institute of Technology, Tiana Clark of Vanderbilt University, Elson S. Floyd, the late president of Washington State University, and Brenda Y. Cartwright of Winston-Salem State University.
Emory’s Kevin Young Wins the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
The award honors the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in the previous calendar year and is presented by the American Academy of Poets. The prize comes with a $25,000 cash award.
University of Louisville Honors Its First Black Educator
The University of Louisville has renamed its Freedom Park to honor Dr. Charles H. Parrish Jr. In 1951, Professor Parrish, who held a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago, became the first Black educator to teach at the university.
Chigozie Obioma Is a Finalist for the 2015 Man Booker Prize
Chigozie Obioma, an assistant professor of English at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, has been named one of six finalists for the 2015 Man Booker Prize, awarded for the best novel written in the English language.
Duke Honors Its First Black Faculty Member
Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, recently held a ceremony to celebrate the naming of its new social policy center to honor Samuel DuBois Cook. In 1966, Dr. Cook became the first African American faculty member at Duke.
