In Memoriam: Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, 1918-2013
Nelson Mandela, the driving force behind the drive to end apartheid in South Africa and the former president of the Republic has died. On May 12, 2005, the editors of JBHE were privileged to attend the awarding of an honorary doctorate by Amherst College to Nelson Mandela at Saint Bartholomew's Church in New York City.
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: Maxine Herring Parker, 1944-2013
Before she was elected to the Birmingham City Council in Alabama in 2005, Parker had a 41-year career as an administrator at Talladega College in Alabama.
In Memoriam: Mitchell Wright Spellman, 1919-2013
Dr. Spellman served on the faculty at the medical schools of Howard University, Charles R. Drew University, the University of Southern California, UCLA, and from 1978 to 2004 at Harvard Medical School.
In Memoriam: Jidlaph Gitau Kamoche, 1940-2013
In 1977, Jidlaph Kamoche became the first director of the American American studies program at the University of Oklahoma. A native of Kenya, he came to the United States to study history at Amherst College.
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: Leslie Woodard, 1960-2013
Leslie Woodard was a lecturer in English and creative writing and dean of Calhoun College at Yale University. Before joining the faculty at Yale, she was the director of undergraduate creative writing at Columbia University in New York City.
In Memoriam: Devenia Victoria Pinder Wallace, 1919-2013
Devenia Wallace joined the faculty at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in the late 1950s. She served as chair of the home economics department, now known as the department of human ecology.
In Memoriam: Lee Thornton, 1942-2013
Dr. Thornton was the first African American woman to serve as a White House correspondent for a major news network. She taught at Howard University for 14 years and was interim dean of the Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.
In Memoriam: Elbert Bernard White, 1945-2013
Before his retirement in 2011, Dr. White was an associate professor and the former associate dean for undergraduate studies in the Volgenau School of Engineering at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
In Memoriam: Kofi Awoonor, 1935-2013
The Ghanaian poet, who studied and taught in the United States, was killed in the terrorist attack at Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya.
In Memoriam: Arnold Tooson Bell, 1951-2013
Dr. Bell taught at Florida A&M University for 31 years. He was the first African American to be named a certified clinical specialist by the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties.
In Memoriam: George L. Howell Jr., 1933-2013
Howell served as an administrator at Tuskegee University from 1975 to 2005. He held various posts including vice president for business and fiscal affairs. After retiring, he continued to serve the university as a special assistant to the president of the university.
In Memoriam: Albert Lee Murray, 1916-2013
Albert Murray, the African American novelist, educator, and essayist, has died at his home in Harlem. He was 97 years old.
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: G. Earl Peace Jr., 1945-2013
Dr. Peace served as a faculty member and administrator at the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, for 21 years. He also held posts at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, and for the University of Wisconsin system.
In Memoriam: Njoku Ekpe Awa, 1938-2013
Professor Awa was born as the son of a tribal chieftain in Nigeria. He earned bachelor's and master's degree at Michigan State University and a Ph.D. at Cornell University. He joined the faculty at Cornell University in 1974 and taught there for 21 years.
In Memoriam: George Ebow Bonney, 1948-2013
Dr. Bonney, a native of Ghana, was a professor of community health and family medicine at Howard University and also served as director of the Statistical Genetics and Bioinformatics Unit at the National Human Genome Center.
In Memoriam: Cecil L. Patterson, 1917-2013
Holding master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Cecil Patterson joined the faculty at what is now North Carolina Central University in 1950 as an assistant professor of English. He taught there for 36 years.
In Memoriam: John Louis Dotson Jr., 1937-2013
Dotson was the publisher of the Akron Beacon Journal when it won a Pulitzer Prize for a series on race. In 1977, Dotson was one of nine journalists who founded what is now the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland, California.
In Memoriam: Jeffrey R. Thomas
Jeffrey R. Thomas, an assistant professor of religion at Paine College in Augusta, Georgia, died earlier this month. He also served as the pastor of the Trinity Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Augusta.
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: Charles A. Hines, 1935-2013
In October, 1994, Dr. Charles A. Hines was appointed the sixth president of Prairie View A&M University and served in that role until 2002. He held a Ph.D. in sociology from Johns Hopkins University and served for 38 years in the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of Major General.
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: Thelma Plane Payton, 1932-2013
Thelma Payton served for 28 years as the First Lady of Tuskegee University. But she also had a 30-year career as a professional in the fields of psychiatric social work, family practice, and social work education.
In Memoriam: Martin Gardiner Bernal, 1937-2013
Professor Bernal and Professor Mary Lefkowitz of Wellesley College engaged in a scholarly give and take in the pages of JBHE in the mid-1990s on Dr. Bernal's thesis that Africans had a major influence on Greek thought and culture.
In Memoriam: Homer Eli Favor, 1925-2013
Homer Favor joined the faculty at Morgan State University in 1956 as an assistant professor of economics. In 1963, he founded the Urban Studies Institute at Morgan State.
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: Hayward Farrar Jr., 1950-2013
He was the Gloria D. Smith Professor of Africana Studies and associate professor of history at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He had served on the Virginia Tech faculty since 1992.
In Memoriam: Mulgrew Miller, 1955-2013
A native of Greenwood, Mississippi, Miller studied at the University of Memphis and began his professional career with the Duke Ellington orchestra. He was appointed director of the jazz studies program at William Paterson University in 2005.
In Memoriam: Stephen A. Martin Sr., 1946-2013
He is the former vice president for finance and chief business officer at Tuskegee University in Alabama. He taught at Dillard University in New Orleans and served in the administration at Delgado Community College in New Orleans and Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth.
In Memoriam: Laura Marie Leary Elliott, 1945-2013
Elliott enrolled at East Carolina University in 1962 at the age of 17 after being the valedictorian at Pitt County Training School in Calico, North Carolina. She was the first African American graduate of the university.
In Memoriam: Richard Iton, 1961-2013
A professor of African American studies and political science at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, Dr. Iton died late last month after a 11-year battle with leukemia. He was 51 years old.
In Memoriam: Arvarh E. Strickland, 1930-2013
After teaching at Chicago State College, in 1969 he became a tenured professor of history at the University of Missouri, the first African American tenured professor in the university's history.
In Memoriam: Ruth Alice Lucas, 1920-2013
She was an educator who was the first African American woman to be promoted to the rank of colonel in the United States Air Force. In 1994 she retired from the University of the District of Columbia after serving as assistant to the dean of the College of Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Technology.
In Memoriam: Antronette Yancey, 1957-2013
A professor of public health at the University of California at Los Angeles, she was a leading advocate of brief periods of exercise throughout the day for schoolchildren and office workers. As an undergraduate, she played varsity basketball at Northwestern University.
