In Memoriam: Camilla Ella Williams (1919-2012)
She was professor emerita at Indiana University and the first Black woman to perform for a major U.S. opera company.
In Memoriam: Marcellus Brooks (1941-2012)
Brooks spent his entire professional career at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.
In Memoriam: Ernest D. Brown Jr. (1947-2012)
The longtime Williams College professor founded the college's Kusika African Dance and Drumming Ensemble and the Zambezi Marimba Band.
In Memoriam: Marion Henry, 1927-2012
Professor Henry had served on the faculty at Prairie View A&M University for 56 years.
In Memoriam: H. Douglas Covington, 1935-2012
He was president of three HBCUs before becoming the first African American to lead a predominantly white, state-operated university in Virginia.
In Memoriam: William James Raspberry, 1935-2012
From 1995 to 2008, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist served as the Knight Professor of the Practice of Communications and Journalism at Duke. He commuted from Washington to Durham each week when classes were in session.
In Memoriam: Thelma McWilliams Glass, 1916-2012
A longtime professor of geography at Alabama State University, she was the last surviving member of the the Women's Political Council, which organized the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56.
In Memoriam: Emerson A. Cooper, 1924-2012
He joined the Oakwood University faculty in 1948 as an instructor of chemistry and taught there until 1992.
In Memoriam: Lindsey Wetherspoon, 1924-2012
He taught for nearly 60 years in the College of Agriculture and Human Sciences at Prairie View A&M University in Texas.
In Memoriam: Mervyn Malcolm Dymally, 1926-2012
The former congressman and lieutenant governor of California served as the director of the Urban Health Institute at the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles.
In Memoriam: Andrew Felton Brimmer Jr. 1926-2012
The son of a sharecropper, he was the first African American to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. He also taught at Harvard Business School and chaired the board of trustees at Tuskegee University for 28 years.
In Memoriam: James Russell Dumpson, 1909-2012
He was the former dean of the Graduate School of Social Science at Fordham University and was the oldest living alumnus of Cheyney University in Pennsylvania.
In Memoriam: Harrison DeWayne Whittington, 1931-2012
A founding member of the board of visitors at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, he also served as a visiting lecturer, Director of Field Experience, and an adviser to the university's Upward Bound program.
In Memorian: Jan Rynveld Carew, 1920-2012
Born in what was then British Guyana, he was a prolific writer and was professor emeritus of African American studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
In Memoriam: Ora-Mae Williams Cheaney, 1912-2013
She was an alumna of Kentucky State University and served on the faculty there for nearly two decades teaching courses on food and nutrition.
In Memoriam: James Edward Hawkins, 1949-2013
Dr. Hawkins joined the faculty at Florida A&M University in 1977 as an assistant professor of broadcast journalism. He served as dean of the journalism school from 2004 to his retirement in 2012.
In Memoriam: William Herbert Gray III, 1941-2013
The former congressman and former president of the United Negro College Fund was featured in an interview for the inaugural issue of The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education in 1992.
In Memoriam: Carl G. Harris Jr., 1935-2013
He served as a professor of music and university organist at Hampton University in Virginia. He was the first African American to earn a doctorate in music from the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
In Memoriam: Julius LeVonne Chambers, 1936-2013
Julius Chambers, a major figure in civil rights law, was the former chancellor of North Carolina Central University and the former director-counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.
In Memoriam: Major Robert Odell Owens, 1936-2013
The former 12-term Congressman from New York was a major supporter of African American higher education and after leaving Washington, taught at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.
In Memoriam: John Calvin Berry, 1925-2013
Berry came to the University of Southern Mississippi as associate director of Title IV programs. In 1970 he was hired as an instructor, the first African American faculty member in university history.
In Memoriam: William M. Spann, 1927-2013
Spann joined the faculty at Shaw University in 1957. He was the founder of the university's program in kinesiology, coached women's basketball, and served as chair of the department of allied health and as athletics director.
In Memoriam: Lonnie E. Duncan, 1967-2013
Dr. Duncan was an associate professor of counseling education and counseling psychology at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. He also served as the co-training director of the university's counseling psychology doctoral program.
In Memoriam: Hazo W. Carter Jr., 1946-2014
Dr. Carter served as president of West Virginia State University for 25 years from 1987 to 2012. He was the longest serving president in the university's history.
In Memoriam: Najee E. Muhammad, 1944-2014
Dr. Muhammad joined the faculty at Ohio University in 1996 and taught in the department of educational studies. He served for one year as interim chair of the department of African American studies.
In Memoriam: CherRhonda Smith-Hollins, 1980-2014
At Prairie View A&M, Dr. Smith-Hollins worked in the areas of student retention and recruitment. She coordinated the engineering school's summer programs and was adviser to the university's chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers.
In Memoriam: Vincent Gordon Harding, 1931-2014
Vincent G. Harding, the civil rights activist, author, and professor emeritus of religion and social transformation at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, died on May 19 in Philadelphia. He was an associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In Memoriam: Anna Lee Cooke, 1923-2014
Anna L. Cooke, who served on the staff at Lane College, a historically Black educational institution in Jackson, Tennessee, for a quarter century, died on June 28 at the Jackson Madison County Hospital. She was 91 years old.
In Memoriam: Abdulalim A. Shabazz, 1927-2014
Abdulalim Shabazz was a Distinguish Professor of Mathematics at Grambling State University in Louisiana. In September 2000, President Clinton presented Dr. Shabazz with a Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring.
In Memoriam: Tritobia Hayes Benjamin, 1944-2014
Dr. Benjamin served for 44 years on the faculty at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She was an accomplished art historian whose research focused on the works of African American women.
In Memorian: Haskell S. Bingham, 1930-2014
Dr. Bingham, the former provost at Virginia State University, traced his roots to a Virginia slave in 1703. He also was a descendant of the slave Gabriel, who was executed in 1800 for planning a slave rebellion in Richmond.
In Memoriam: Annie Frances Lee, 1935-2014
Annie Lee was an internationally acclaimed artist who was a major supporter of the Tom Joyner Foundation's effort to raise money for historically Black colleges and universities.
In Memorian: Wilbert Augustus Cheatham, 1942-2014
Gus Cheatham was the longest-serving vice president in the history of Loma Linda University in California. He also served as deputy assistant secretary and deputy director of the Office for Civil Rights in what was then the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
In Memoriam: Dorothy James Orr, 1920-2015
Dorothy James Orr taught at Fordham University in The Bronx, New York and was vice chair of the African American Leadership Forum for Education Policy at Pace University in New York.
In Memoriam: Verdelle B. Bellamy, 1927-2015
In 1963, Verdelle Bellamy received a master's degree in nursing from Emory University. She was one of two Black students to earn a degree that day, the first African Americans to earn degrees from the university.
In Memoriam: Franklin Jerome Anderson, 1954-2015
Franklin J. Anderson was a lecturer in African American studies and director of the Challenger Program at the University of Houston. The Challenger Program is a TRIO program for student support services, funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
