Roger Wilkins, the civil rights legend, author, government official, journalist, and educator, joined the faculty at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, in 1988 as the Clarence J. Robinson Professor in History and American Culture. He remained on the faculty for nearly 20 years.
Carol Anderson, the Charles Howard Candler Professor and chair of African American studies at Emory University in Atlanta won in the criticism category and Ishion Hutchinson, an assistant professor of English at Cornell University, won in the poetry category.
Gilda Barabino, dean of engineering at City College of New York, is being honored by the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and Janelle Baker of Alcorn State University was honored at the Health Disparities Conference at Xavier University in New Orleans.
Beverly Edmond, the interim provost at the University of Montana, shared the Trailblazer Award from the Conference of Minority Public Administrators, a division of the American Society for Public Administration. She and her co-author were honored for the book Trailblazing African American Public Administrators.
Crystal Wilkinson, the Appalachian Writer-in-Residence at Berea College in Kentucky, has won the 2016 Weatherford Award for Fiction from the Appalachian Studies Association and the 2017 Judy Gaines Young Book Award from Transylvania University.
The honorees are Em Claire Knowles, assistant dean for student and alumni affairs at Simmons College in Boston and Bridgette Rahim-Williams, associate dean for research at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Professor Williams, a conservative economist, writes a syndicated newspaper column and is the author of 10 books.
The Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship celebrates and supports faculty in the humanities who embrace public engagement as part of the scholarly vocation. One of this year's eight fellows is an African American: Jodi Skipper of the University of Mississippi.
Monika Williams Shealey, a dean at Rowan University was honored by the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education and Tina Simpson, associate professor at the University of Alabama Birmingham, won an award from the American Medical Women's Association.
Julian Bond, the noted civil rights leader, legislator, author, NAACP chair, and long-time faculty member at the University of Virginia who died in 2015, was the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Anna Deavere Smith is a professor of art and public policy at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. An actress, playwright, and performance artist, Smith is the first winner of the Polk Award who is not a traditional journalist.
The honorees are Hortense Spillers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Bettye M. Clark at Clark Atlanta University, Fenice Boyd of the University at Buffalo, and Derek B. Bardell of Delgado Community College in New Orleans.
Lanre Akinsiku, a lecturer in English at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was honored by having two of this books selected for inclusion on the best books of the year for children and young adults by the New York Public Library.
The award, presented by Claremont Graduate University in California, honors a mid-career poet with a prize of $100,000. Professor Francis, who joined the Dartmouth College faculty last fall, will be honored in April.
Renee A. Middleton, professor and dean of the College of Education at Ohio University in Athens, was honored for her outstanding contributions to teacher education by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
The department of transportation in North Carolina plans to have stretches of interstate highways in the state named for Julius L. Chambers, who was chancellor of North Carolina Central University, and John Hope Franklin, the noted historian who was a long-time professor at Duke University.
Jacqueline Allen Trimble, chair of the department of languages and literatures at Alabama State University in Montgomery was named as the recipient of the Seven Sister Book Award for the best book of the year.
Carole Boston Weatherford, a professor of English at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, has been selected to receive the Randolph Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King Book Award from the American Library Association.
Idris Goodwin, an assistant professor of theatre at Colorado College, has won the 2017 Blue Ink Playwriting Award from the American Blues Theater in Chicago. The award was created in 2010 to help the careers of budding playwrights.
The honorees are Wanda Spurlock of Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Carmen Robinson of the University of California, Santa Cruz, Alex Acholonu of Alcorn State University in Mississippi, and Joy Buolamwini of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.