In Memoriam: Maurice Stallworth Cherry
Dr. Cherry served as chaplain at Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, from 1959 to 1975. While there, he and his wife, the late Dr. Joyce Cherry, served as professors. Additionally, he served as president of Texas College and was a professor at what is now Albany State University.
In Memoriam: Walter Robinson, 1953-2019
Walter Robinson had retired from his position as associate vice chancellor of enrollment management at the University of California, Davis last September. He had a career in admissions and enrollment management in higher education that spanned nearly 40 years.
In Memoriam: Maurice Wilton Johnson Sr., 1943-2019
Johnson served for 10 years at Grambling State University in Louisiana, first as assistant director of bands and then director of bands.
In Memoriam: Olivia Cousins, 1948-2019
Olivia Cousins was a feminist scholar, African American historian, and long-time faculty member at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York. She served on the faculty there for more than 30 years.
In Memoriam: Niara Sudarkasa, 1938-2019
In 1969, Dr. Sudarkasa joined the faculty at the University of Michigan. She was the first tenured African American faculty member at the university. In 1986, she was appointed the eleventh president of historically Black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and served in that role for 12 years.
In Memoriam: Byrdie Annette Larkin, 1952-2019
Dr. Larkin joined the faculty at Alabama State University in 1977. At the time, she was the only women faculty member in the department of political science. She taught at the university for 39 years until her retirement in 2016.
In Memoriam: Adelaide Cromwell, 1919-2019
Dr. Cromwell first joined the Boston University faculty in 1951. Two years later, she co-founded the university's African Studies Center. In 1969, she founded the university's African American studies program, the country's second such program and the first to offer a graduate degree in the subject.
In Memoriam: Tchet Dereic Dorman, 1965-2019
Dr. Dorman most recently served as a senior consultant for the American Cancer Society. Earlier in his career, Dr. Dorman was director of student support services at Temple University in Philadelphia.
In Memoriam: Wright Lassiter Jr., 1934-2019
Dr. Lassiter was appointed chancellor of Dallas County Community College District in 2007. He was the first African American to hold the position. Earlier in his career, Dr. Lassiter served for 20 years as president of El Centro College in Dallas.
In Memoriam: Floyd L. Robinson
Floyd L. Robinson was the former band director, professor, and administrator at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina. Upon his retirement in 2001, the university renamed its fine arts auditorium in his honor.
In Memoriam: Rita Roberts Jones, 1934-2019
Rita Jones began her career at Oakwood University in 1972 as dean of freshman women.
In Memoriam: Philip Freelon, 1952-2019
Philip Freelon was an educator, architect, and a key figure in the design of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. He served as a professor of practice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In Memoriam: William Benjamin Ray Sr., 1925-2019
After concluding his career as an opera performer, Ray taught for 10 years at the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In 1992, Ray became director of the voice program at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
In Memoriam: David L. Ferguson, 1949-2019
David L. Ferguson was department chair and Distinguished Service Professor of Technology and Society at Stony Brook University in New York. He had taught at the university since 1981.
In Memoriam: Andraé Derrell Sailes, 1979-2019
Sailes joined the staff at Purdue University in June 2004 as the assistant director of undergraduate admissions. He became director of academic and career advising for the College of Liberal Arts in 2016.
In Memoriam: Harrison B. Wilson Jr., 1925-2019
Dr. Wilson served as president of Norfolk State for 22 years. When he arrived on campus in 1975, the school only offered four graduate programs and enrolled 191 students. By the end of Dr. Wilson's presidency in 1997, the university offered 14 master's programs, one doctoral program, and enrolled 1,110 students.
In Memoriam: Julius S. Scott Jr., 1925 -2019
Julius S. Scott Jr. served as president of two historically Black colleges and as interim president of several additional colleges and universities.
In Memoriam: Roderick Earl Richardson, 1955-2019
In 1986, Roderick Richardson joined the staff at the University of Maryland College Park as a budget analyst. He retired from his position in 2015 due to ailing health.
In Memoriam: McDonald Williams, 1917-2019
Dr. Williams served as director of the Honors Program at Tennessee State University for 23 years before his retirement in 1988. He also spent 30 years at the university serving as a professor of English.
In Memoriam: Paule Marshall, 1929-2019
Paule Marshall taught at both Virginia Commonwealth University and New York University. She authored numerous novels, essays, and works of short fiction.
In Memoriam: Gwendolyn Lytle
Gwendolyn Lytle was a member of the music department faculty at Pomona College in Claremont, California, for 35 years. Earlier, she taught at the University of California, Riverside.
In Memoriam Wilbert Greenfield, 1933-2019
Dr. Wilbert Greenfield became the tenth president of Johnson C. Smith University in 1973 and served in that role until 1982. In 1984, the University's board of trustees named a dormitory Wilbert Greenfield Hall in his honor.
In Memoriam: Matthew Jenkins, 1933-2019
Dr. Jenkins served as a member of the Tuskegee University board of trustees and president of the Tuskegee University Foundation. Upon the sudden resignation of then-President Gilbert Rochon in 2013, Dr. Jenkins was asked to serve as acting president of Tuskegee University.
In Memoriam: Cain Hope Felder, 1943-2019
Cain Hope Felder was a biblical scholar who taught at the Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, D.C. for 35 years. There he served as the editor of The Journal of Religious Thought.
In Memoriam: Cornelius W. Grant, 1931-2019
Cornelius Grant, who served for 30 years as vice president of student affairs at Albany State University, died late last month in Albany, Georgia.
In Memoriam: James A. Donaldson, 1941-2019
Dr. Donaldson joined the faculty at Howard University in 1971. He chaired the Howard University mathematics department from 1972 to 1990. In this position, he developed the first doctoral program in mathematics at a historically Black university.
In Memoriam: Tracie Gibson
Dr. Gibson joined the staff at the University of Massachusetts in 2017. Before coming to Amherst, Dr. Gibson served on the faculty at the University of Texas-Permian Basin and later at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
In Memoriam: Floyd David Young Jr., 1938-2019
Floyd Young was the founder and president of FDY Inc. a food services company that provided services to historically Black Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. He provided financial assistance to more than 100 students through the Floyd and Norma Young Annual Scholarship.
In Memoriam: Alfred Lee Bright, 1940-2019
Professor bright joined the faculty at Youngstown State University in Ohio in 1965. He was the university's first Black faculty member. He served as the founding director of the Black studies program at the university from 1970 to 1987.
In Memoriam: Clifford Cornell Baker, 1929-2019
In 1976, Dr. Baker was named assistant state superintendent of education in Alabama. This was the highest position ever held at that time by an African-American in the state's Department of Education. He came out of retirement in 1991 to become the ninth president of Alabama State University.
In Memoriam: Wilhelmina Matilda Reuben-Cooke, 1946-2019
Wilhelmina Reuben-Cooke was a professor of law at the University of the District of Columbia, professor emerita of law at Syracuse University in New York, and one of the first African American students to enroll at Duke University in North Carolina.
In Memoriam: Ernest James Gaines, 1933-2019
Ernest J. Gaines, the celebrated author and long-time educator at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, died earlier this month at his home in Oscar, Louisiana. He was 86 years old.
In Memoriam: Mary T. Christian, 1924-2019
Dr. Christian served as chair of the department of elementary education and was dean of the School of Education at Hampton University in Virginia. She also was elected to nine consecutive terms as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
In Memoriam: Shirley Walker Dixon, 1946-2019
Dr. Dixon was a pioneer in many ways at Cabrini University in Radnor, Pennsylvania. In 1990, she was the first African American to be appointed to the university's board of trustees. In 2018, she was the first person to be awarded a doctorate at the university and also became the first person to earn bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees at Cabrini.
In Memoriam: Tejumola Olaniyan, 1959-2019
A native of Nigeria, Dr. Olaniyan was the Louise Durham Mead Professor of English and the Wole Soyinka Professor of the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
In Memoriam: Paul Elritt Meacham, 1936-2019
Dr. Meacham was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in education at the University of Texas and the first African American to serve as president of a college or university in the state of Nevada.
