In Memoriam: Nicholas deBelleville Katzenbach (1922-2012)
A giant in the battle for civil rights in this country, as deputy attorney general during the Kennedy administration he confronted Alabama Governor George Wallace in the schoolhouse door.
In Memoriam: Wesley Anthony Brown (1927-2012)
In 1949 Brown became the first African American graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
In Memoriam: Marion Henry, 1927-2012
Professor Henry had served on the faculty at Prairie View A&M University for 56 years.
In Memoriam: Freddye T. Davy, 1933-2012
She was director of the Honors College at Hampton University. This spring the college was renamed in her honor.
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: Yvonne Bond Miller, 1934-2012
A professor emerita of childhood education at Norfolk State University, she was the first Black woman elected to both houses of the Virginia legislature.
In Memoriam: John W. Porter, 1931-2012
In 1979 he was selected as the 17th president of Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti and served in that post for a decade.
In Memoriam: Leontine T.C. Kelly, 1920-2012
An educator and social activist, she was the first Black woman bishop in a mainstream Christian denomination.
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: Michel-Rolph Trouillot, 1949-2012
He was a a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago. He published his first book on the Haitian revolution while he was an undergraduate student at CUNY.
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: Roy Simon Bryce-Laporte, 1933-2012
A longtime member of the faculty at Colgate University, he was the first director of the African American studies program at Yale University.
In Memoriam: Albert Cornelius Freeman Jr., 1934-2012
He taught in the department of theater at Howard University since 1991 and chaired the department for six years.
In Memoriam: Aaronette M. White, 1961-2012
She was an associate professor of psychology and associate dean of equity and social responsibility in the Division of Social Sciences of the University of California at Santa Cruz.
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: James L. Hill, 1928-2012
A special assistant to the president of the University of Texas, he was the first African American to serve as a vice president of the university.
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: Philip Byron Nixon, 1953-2012
He was assistant vice president of student services at Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama.
In Memoriam: Rollin Charles Williams, 1922-2012
In 1957, he was hired as an assistant professor of social work, the first African American faculty member at the University of Connecticut.
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 Memoriam: Lawrence Guyout, 1939-2012
He was a civil rights activist who inspired generations of students to become involved in politics. He was a graduate of Tougaloo College and the law school at Rutgers University.
In Memoriam: Cedric Sydney Rodney, 1924-2012
Until his recent retirement, he was the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religion and Ethics at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina.
In Memoriam: Christopher C. Mercer, 1924-2012
He was one of the six Black students who racially integrated the School of Law at the University of Arkansas. He was an adviser to the Little Rock Nine, the students who racially integrated Central High School in 1957.
In Memoriam: Mozella Smith Peterson Galloway, 1951-2012
She was the co-founder and president of the National Black Herstory Task Force, a nonprofit cultural and educational organization dedicated to celebrate and chronicle the lives of women of African descent.
In Memoriam: Vernice Doris Ferguson, 1928-2012
After a long and distinguished career in government service, she was named a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and held the Fagin Family Chair in Diversity.
In Memoriam: Gloria Davy, 1931-2012
She was the first African American to perform as Aida at the Metropolitan Opera and served on the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington from 1984 to 1997.
In Memoriam: Henry Blackwell, 1936-2012
He taught at Boston College for 32 and was the first African American to ever serve as a faculty member in the college's English Department.
In Memoriam: J. Blaine Hudson, 1949-2013
Dr. Hudson had been on medical leave since August and in December had resigned as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Louisville. He had planned to return to the faculty in 2014.
In Memoriam: Arthur J. Bond, 1939-2012
Educated at Purdue University, he was the former dean of engineering and technology at Alabama A&M University. As a graduate student he was an adviser to students who formed what is now the National Society of Black Engineers.
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: Brooklyn T. McMillon, 1915-2013
Over a career of 65 years of service to North Carolina Central University, he was registrar, professor, chair of the health education department, and volunteer university archivist.
In Memoriam: James Alexander Hood, 1942-2013
Hood was one of two Black students who successfully integrated the University of Alabama in 1963. He spent only two months on a hostile campus before transferring to Wayne State University. Many years later, he returned to the University of Alabama to earn a doctoral degree.
In Memoriam: Gloria Richardson Smith, 1934-2013
She was the former dean of the nursing schools at the University of Oklahoma and Wayne State University and was the first nurse to be named director of the Michigan Department of Public Health.
