Black History Month

Dear friends and colleagues:

As we join with citizens across the country to celebrate Black History Month, I invite you all to spend time to learn about some of the very special people who chose Union Institute & University as the place to study what they loved, with a dream of making a difference in the lives of others.

The brief biographies below describe a few extraordinary accomplishments by UI&U alumni and learners. These mini-bios may describe "firsts" achieved in a particular category; some tell of first-person connections to people or events in our nation's history; others detail remarkable decades of steady contributions that have touched people around a region, across the nation, or even internationally. Our first offering is attached below.

I hope this Union-specific celebration of superior achievement brings us all a deeper appreciation of the remarkable history, the exciting present, and the unlimited future for adult learners who want to make a difference, and who choose Union Institute & University to follow their dreams.

Warm regards,

Roger H. Sublett, Ph.D.
President

ELECTED OFFICIALS AND CIVIC LEADERS, PART 1

Danny K. Davis , Ph.D. 1977 is the U.S. Congressional Representativefrom Chicago's 7th District. A Democrat in his sixth elected term, in the current 109th Congress Davis serves on the Committee on Government Reform, where he is ranking member (Democrat with most seniority) of the Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization, as well as the Committees on Small Business and Education and the Workforce. He also serves as secretary of the Congressional Black Caucus, chair of the Postal Caucus, and as regional whip in the Democratic Caucus.

In 2003, Davis introduced the Public Safety Ex-Offenders Self Sufficiency Act (H.R. 2166), which continues to gain support in the 109th Congress. If enacted, it will provide funding and services designed to rehabilitate and prepare ex-offenders for a healthy and positive reentry into normal society upon their release from correctional facilities and institutions, ultimately reducing recidivism. In October 2004, President Bush signed into law the College Care and Counseling Act, a bill co-sponsored by Davis to bring national attention and resources to the mental and behavioral health needs of students on college campuses.

Prior to becoming a member of Congress, Davis served on the Cook County Board of Commissioners for six years, and before that spent 11 years on Chicago City Council as alderman of the 29th Ward. Before seeking public office, he had productive careers as an educator, community organizer, health planner/administrator, and civil rights advocate.

ELECTED OFFICIALS AND CIVIC LEADERS, PART 2

Frank Smith Jr. , Ph.D. 1980 was a founding member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Morehouse College in Atlanta, leaving during his senior year to play a role in the civil rights movement. From 1962 until 1968, Smith worked with SNCC organizing and registering African Americans voters in Mississippi and Alabama, and helped lead protests and marches in Greenwood, Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Smith moved to Washington, D.C., where he was a researcher for the Institute for Policy Studies and became involved in local community issues. From 1982-1998, Smith served five terms on the District of Columbia City Council, and then embarked on a lifelong goal: to establish the African American Civil War Memorial and an accompanying museum. Smith worked to secure financing, District support, and the active involvement of public and private agencies for the only national memorial to the colored troops who fought in the Civil War. Smith continues to serve as executive director for the memorial unveiled in 1998 and the museum, which opened in 1999.

Catherine L. Barrett , B.A. 1980 (business administration) is in her fourth consecutive two-year term as State Representative for District 32 (Forest Park/Cincinnati) in the Ohio House of Representatives. Barrett serves on the criminal justice, health, insurance, and finance and appropriations standing committees of the Ohio General Assembly, and is a board member for the Ohio Children's Trust Fund. She is a recipient of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks "Ohio Hunger Heroine Award." Previously, Barrett served the Cincinnati area as a Forest Park City Council member and later as mayor of Forest Park.

ELECTED OFFICIALS AND CIVIC LEADERS, PART 3

Nancy Boxill , Ph.D. 1980 and Graduate College core faculty member gained the distinction in 1987 of becoming the first woman to serve on the Fulton County Board of Commissioners in Atlanta, Georgia, and is currently serving her fourth elected term as a commissioner. In 2000 Boxill sparked local efforts that made sexual exploitation of children in Georgia a felony, receiving the 2003 Pathbreaker Award from Shared Hope International and the War Against Trafficking Alliance for her work in this area.  She also wrote and secured passage of the first Employee Child Care Lottery program in the Southeast, as well as the first Family Medical Leave Act for a local government in the region. Boxill helped found and served from 1995-2001 as executive director of Atlanta's Inn for Children, an extended hour, non-profit early learning facility developed by five major hotels to serve hourly workers.

Robert B. Ingram , Ph.D. 1978 served six terms as mayor of Opa-locka, Florida, and is a past president of the National Conference of Black Mayors. Ingram was the first African American police officer to retire from the Miami Police Department and become chief of an urban police department (in the city of Opa-locka), as well as the first African American city manager of South Miami. Currently Ingram serves as a member of the Miami-Dade County School Board, and assistant to the president for urban affairs at Florida Memorial University.

CURRENT COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS, PART 1

Grace Sawyer Jones , Ph.D. 1985 became president of Three Rivers Community College in Norwich, Connecticut in 2001. Since then, she has worked to renovate and construct a consolidated college facility based on learning college concepts. Previously, Jones had served since 1996 as president of the College of Eastern Utah. Jones began her work as a secondary physical education and science teacher in Chicago, Illinois, where she also coached and advised athletic teams and cheerleaders, and helped to design a new school. She entered higher education's community college environment in the late 1970s as a faculty member at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. From 1990 to 1996, Jones was vice president for multicultural affairs and a tenured professor at the State University of New York, College of Oneonta. In 2005, Jones was named Women of the Year by the Norwich chapter of the Business and Professional Women's Organization.

George A. Pruitt, Ph.D. 1974, member and past chair of UI&U's Board of Trustees, has served as president of Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, New Jersey since 1982. Pruitt's leadership in education extends to the national level, including his recent appointment by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to his fourth consecutive term on the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, the primary group that advises the secretary about postsecondary accreditation and quality. Pruitt is the committee's longest serving member and he has now advised five U.S. secretaries of education under three presidents. In addition, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine recently named Pruitt co-chair of his Higher Education Policy Group. He also chairs the New Jersey Presidents' Council, which helps coordinate higher education in the state and represents the interests of New Jersey's 57 institutions, including four-year public and independent institutions, community colleges, and proprietary and religious colleges.  

CURRENT COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS, PART 2

Michael E. O'Neal , Ph.D. 1983 and UI&U doctoral core faculty from 1997-2004, became president of H. Lavity Stoutt Community College in Tortola, British Virgin Islands, in August 2005. He succeeds UI&U alumnus Charles H. Wheatley, Ph.D. 1997, who retired after serving as president for 14 years. O'Neal served as vice president at the college since 1993. Previously he was the first resident tutor of the University of the West Indies. An alumnus of Harvard University's Institute for Educational Management, O'Neal is a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute (U.K.) and the American Anthropological Association. Prior to his academic career, he was managing director of the business enterprises of J.R. O'Neal Ltd. He has served on numerous boards and commissions, including the British Virgin Islands Public Service Commission and the Development Bank of the British Virgin Islands. Currently he chairs the British Virgin Islands National Parks Trust.

Charles W. Simmons , Ph.D. 1978 has served since 1980 as president of Sojourner-Douglass College in Baltimore, the only private, predominantly black institution of higher learning in the state of Maryland. Simmons founded the institution in 1972 as the Homestead-Montebello Center of Antioch University, and was co-director of the Antioch affiliate designed to provide higher education to African American working adults and empower the community through institutional and economic development. Under his leadership, Sojourner-Douglass became a multi-campus College offering four-year baccalaureate and master's degree programs at sites in Maryland's Anne Arundel, Prince Georges, Calvert, Dorchester, and Wicomoco Counties, and a full campus in Nassau, Bahamas. The main campus in Baltimore City has grown into an educational complex where the College founded and operates the new Inner Harbor East Academy for Young Scholars, a charter school with grades K-3, with plans to add a grade each year to grade 12. Simmons has also chaired several Evaluation Teams for the Middle States Association Commission on Higher Education. UI&U alumna who work with Simmons include Marian Stanton, Ph.D. 1976, provost and vice president for academic and student affairs, and Alice Thomas, Ph.D. 2000, executive assistant to the president.

MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKERS  

Jawanza Kunjufu , Ph.D.1984, is president of African American Images, a Chicago-based communications and publishing company. An educational consultant, lecturer, and motivational speaker, Kunjufu addresses students, parents, teachers, and church and community groups across the country. He is author of more than 20 books, many focused on enhancing self-image and self-esteem for African American youth, including Restoring the Village: Solutions for the Black Family; Motivating and Preparing Black Youth for Success; Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys, Volumes 1-4; and Black College Student Survival Guide.

David Anderson Ph.D. 1975, also known as Sankofa, leads residencies in storytelling and writing, has performed at schools, libraries, and colleges throughout the country as well as in Ghana, West Africa, and has appeared on WGBH Boston's National Public Radio station. Anderson is author of several books including The Origin of Life on Earth: An African Creation Myth, which received the African Studies Association Outstanding Book Award in 1992 and the Multicultural Publishers Exchange's Book Award of Excellence in 1993. Anderson teaches African American studies at Rochester, New York area colleges and chairs the Rochester-Monroe County Freedom Trail Commission.

Clarence E. Williams Jr. , Ph.D. 1998, is founding director of the Institute for Recovery from Racisms and director of the Office of Black Catholic Ministries for the Archdiocese of Detroit. His workshops for corporations such as General Motors and nonprofit, community, and religious groups around the country, and his book, Racial Sobriety: A Journey from Hurts to Healing (2002), grew out of his UI&U doctoral studies focused on education and cultural communication. A member of the Cincinnati Province of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, Williams is often cited in the media for his work with regional coalition groups as well as city leaders.  

EDUCATORS, PART 1  

Shirley Johnson, Ph.D. 1996 was given her first job- door-to-door voter registration campaigns at age 10-by civil rights leader Medgar Evers, a close friend of her father, Samuel Bailey, then president of the Jackson, Mississippi, branch of the NAACP. As a teen in the 1960s, Johnson herself was active in the civil rights movement. She witnessed Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "Dream" speech in Washington, D.C. and was even jailed several times for civil disobedience. After a long career as an elementary classroom teacher in Dade County ( Florida) Public Schools from 1967 to 1988, Johnson became a bargaining agent representative for United Teachers of Dade, serving as secretary-treasurer in 2001 and as UTD's interim president in 2003-2004. Currently Johnson is an administrative director for Miami-Dade County Public Schools and the NAACP Miami Chapter's Youth Advisory Council director, a position held years ago in Montgomery, Alabama by Rosa Parks, another leader Johnson knew and emulated while growing up.

Eleanor Nunn ,Ph.D. 2001 was an undergraduate at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina the early 1960s when she became a founding member, along with Marian Wright Edelman, Marion Barry, and Julian Bond, of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which staged nonviolent protests to open doors and end segregation. After serving in the Peace Corps as head of a university science department in Nigeria, she taught science in New York, then moved back to Raleigh and developed science programs for historically black schools through the North Carolina Biotechnology Center in Research Triangle Park. Currently Nunn is director of training and education with the Julius L. Chambers Biomedical/Biotechnology Research Institute at North Carolina Central University.

L. Jim Tolbert B.A. 1990 is a former professional football player for the San Diego Chargers, Houston Oilers, and St. Louis Cardinals. Tolbert has fulfilled his lifelong dream of working in education and now counsels students in the Extended Opportunities Programs and Services (EOPS) in the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District in El Cajon, California. 

EDUCATORS, PART 2  

Maxine Mimms , Ph.D. 1977, emeritus faculty member at The Evergreen State College headquartered in Olympia Washington, began in 1972 to develop an educational program that would serve inner-city working adults in Tacoma, especially in the African-American community. Formally established in 1982, The Evergreen State College Tacoma Campus remained under Mimms' leadership until she retired in 1991. A national consultant in curriculum design and instructional methods, particularly in development of basic reading and math skills, she now directs the Maxine Mimms Academies, designed as a transformative education model for underperforming students, and works in partnerships with faith-based and public schools. Mimms has served on the Washington Governor's Committee for Educational Reform, with an emphasis on assessments and budget revitalization.

W. Joye Hardiman , Ph.D. 1986 followed fellow alumna Maxine Mimms, Ph.D. as executive director of The Evergreen State College Tacoma Campus, where she continues to refine and perpetuate the program's unique accomplishments. An International Executive Board member of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, Hardiman has done extensive field research on the African presence in global history in Egypt, India, Ghana, Kenya, the Yucatan, Trinidad, the United States and Canada, using literary and popular culture analysis as her primary methodology. She participates in many state and national higher education reform efforts, including the Washington Center for Improvement of Undergraduate Education's Community College Minority Student Success Project, and the Ford Foundation Cultural Pluralism Summer Institute. In addition holding a Ph.D. from UI&U, Hardiman is an alumna of Harvard University's Management Development Program and a former Fulbright Scholar.

NONPROFIT AND PUBLIC POLICY LEADERS, PART 1

Ron Daniels, Ph.D. 2000 is a veteran social and political activist. After serving as executive director of the National Rainbow Coalition in 1987 and as southern regional coordinator and deputy campaign manager for Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign, Daniels ran as an independent U.S. presidential candidate in 1992. Currently he is executive director of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal and educational organization committed to creative use of the law as a positive force for social change in cases of civil and human rights violations. He is also president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century. He has taught history, political science, and Pan African/black studies at several institutions including Cornell University, Kent State University, and the College of Wooster in Ohio. A frequent media commentator, Daniels writes columns for African American and progressive newspapers nationwide, appears on national network and cable newscasts and talk shows, and hosts "Vantage Point" from 9 to 10 weeknights on New York's WWRL-AM (1600) radio.

Ilene D. Payne, Ph.D. 1995 is executive in residence with the University of Rhode Island Transportation Center in Kingston, Rhode Island. Payne has more than 30 years of federal service, most recently as director of universities and grant programs for the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration since 1992. Previously she was senior state programs training officer for the National Highway Institute at the Federal Highway Administration. She also has served as chief of the internal equal employment opportunity division and national federal women's program manager with the Federal Highway Administration.

NONPROFIT AND PUBLIC POLICY LEADERS, PART 2

Carol L. Adams, Ph.D. 1976 was appointed by Governor Rod Blagojevich as secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services in January 2003. An experienced researcher, educator, applied sociologist, and human services administrator, Adams began her career in academia in 1968 as research director for the Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University. After several years as the first director of research and planning for the Neighborhood Institute, a division of South Shore Bank (now the Shorebank Institute), Adams directed Loyola University's African-American Studies program from 1981-1988. She then joined the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), where from 1989 to1996 she managed 13 departments and a $500 million budget. She subsequently served as director for the International House of Blues Foundation and Chicago's Museums and Schools program. Prior to her state-level appointment, Adams returned to Northeastern University in 2000, this time as executive director of the Center for Inner City Studies.

Cleo Glenn-Johnson, B.A. 1987 is president of the Black United Fund of Texas and founding executive director of the George Thomas "Mickey" Leland Library and Museum of African History, Culture, and Social Change. Glenn-Johnson served as special assistant and community outreach coordinator for the late Congressman Leland from 1981 to 1986. She also serves on the University of Houston's African American Studies Program Advisory Board, and is a columnist for Houston Business Connections.

CREATIVE ARTISTS, PART 1

Clarence Major, Ph.D. 1978 is a prize-winning author, essayist, and poet whose numerous books include from Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang (Viking, 1994), Calling the Wind: Twentieth Century African-American Short Stories (ed., Harper Collins, 1993), Such Was The Season (Louisiana State University Press, 2003), and Come by Here: My Mother's Life (John Wiley & Sons, 2002). Also well known for his paintings, he was the subject of a monograph, Clarence Major and His Art (University of North Carolina Press, 2001), with contributions from numerous essayists and critics. His many honors include a Western States Book Award for Fiction, Pushcart prizes for poetry and for fiction, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a National Council on the Arts Fellowship. Major contributes to many international periodicals and anthologies, and reviews for The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, and others. He has lectured in dozens of U.S. universities as well as in England, France, Liberia, West Germany, Ghana, and Italy, and is currently a professor of 20th-century American literature at the University of California at Davis.

Kimberly Sherah Khamisi, B.A. 2001 Cincinnati Gantz Center and current learner in UI&U's Master of Arts program, is executive/artistic director of the Medasi Dance Theatre, which consists of adult touring members and a children's troupe, supported by a drum-based orchestra. Medasi promotes an appreciation for African culture and "edu-tains" (both educate and entertain) the public through artistically exhilarating dance, music, and folklore presentations, appearing in well-known venues such as the Aronoff Center for Performing Arts and the Cincinnati Zoo, at festivals and celebrations throughout the area, and on locally produced television specials.

CREATIVE ARTS, PART 2

Wade E. Barnes, M.A. 2004 Vermont College, is musical director and drummer of the legendary Brooklyn Repertory Ensemble, a nationally funded touring arts group of veteran musicians dedicated to passing on the rich American cultural legacy of jazz through concerts, clinics, and workshops for students of all ages in their visits to communities around the country.  Barnes has performed with jazz artists Doc Cheatham, George Coleman, and many others. He serves on the board of advisors for the African American Jazz Caucus, an affiliate of the International Association for Jazz Education.

Carolyn Holbrook, Ph.D. 2002 is the founder/artistic director of SASE: The Write Place, a community-based organization in Minnesota for writers and spoken word artists that focuses on making the arts accessible, establishing links between diverse communities, improving youth self-esteem, and helping the homeless and survivors of domestic and sexual abuse find healing through the creative process. Holbrook received a St. Paul Companies Leadership Initiatives in Neighborhoods fellowship in 1996, and was named one of "100 People to Watch In The Year 2000 and Beyond" by Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine. Her personal essays and chapters of her memoir-in-progress have appeared in numerous literary journals, and the Twin Cities Women's Choir set one of her memoirs to music for a concert performance in 2004. Holbrook is an assistant professor of creative writing at Hamline University.

CREATIVE ARTS, PART 3

Cecil Hale, Ph.D. 1978 helped expand opportunities for minorities in radio, television, the recording industry, and film as president of the National Association of Television and Radio Artists (NATRA) from 1973 to 1975. He began his career on Chicago radio and then moved to Hollywood, where he worked with Capitol Records for three years as vice president/artist & repertoire, and for Phonogram/Mercury Records-Polygram as national album promotion manager and national publicity manager. Hale has executive producer credits for many recording artists, including Natalie Cole, Peabo Bryson, Maze, Minnie Ripperton, Taste of Honey, George Duke, and Nancy Wilson. As a media and political campaign consultant, he produced local television educational projects and advised the Federal Republic of Nigeria about network television. Hale's post-doctoral degrees include the M.P.A. from Harvard University/John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Advanced Management Certificate from Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. Hale served for several years as faculty at Stanford University's Mass Media Institute and at San Francisco State University's Music/Recording Industry Program, and spent the last two years as an external honors examiner for Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. He is a full-time faculty member in the Broadcast Electronic Media Arts Department at City College of San Francisco since 1986.  Hale's accomplishments are noted in a permanent collection at the DuSable Museum of African-American History in Chicago and online at www.thehistorymakers.com.

Margaret "Muggy Do" Dickinson, Ph.D. 1987 is president/CEO, clinical director, and co-founder (with Sirkku Sky Hiltunen, Ph.D. 1998, executive vice president) of the Art and Drama Therapy Institute (ADTI), a medically supervised therapeutic day treatment center that aims to shatter the negative stereotypes and perceptions that suppress individuals between the ages of 21 and 70 with mental retardation and developmental disabilities. Located in Washington, D.C. and hailed by the President's Commission on Mental Retardation as "a model for the rest of the nation," the program helps develop social skills and build self-esteem through innovative behavior management techniques, including art, music and poetry instruction, movement and drama therapies, fitness training, life skills, and the Therapeutic Noh Theater®, the first ensemble in the world to feature public performances by persons with mental retardation who perform sacred dances to ancient ritualistic music in glamorous costumes and detailed masks.

Lucius Weathersby, Ph.D. 2002 was interim dean of humanities, chair of music, and assistant professor of music and African world studies at Dillard University, New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina stuck in September 2005. Currently Weathersby is a visiting artist/professor of music at Amherst College in Springfield, Massachusetts, his host while Dillard recovers from hurricane damage. An accomplished concert organist and pianist, he performs throughout the United States, Europe, and Central America, conducts orchestral and vocal ensembles, lectures extensively about African-American music, baroque music, and keyboard technique, and records for the Albany (UK and USA) and Starmundi (Italy) labels. He is also a composer, and in November 2005 he included his "New Orleans Suite" on a CD featuring other African and African American composers that he recorded in Germany, sponsored by the centuries-old Hey Organ Company, and performed on three spectacular pipe organs in Leutershausen, Mellrichstadt, and Kreuzberg, all to benefit Gulf Coast church musicians and organ makers impacted by Hurricane Katrina. In addition to teaching and performing, Weathersby has served throughout his life as music minister or artistic director at churches in New Orleans, Phoenix, Arizona, and many others.

AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES AND BLACK HISTORY EXPERTS, PART 1

Barrymore Anthony Bogues, a 1989 B.A. graduate from the Florida Academic Center, is chair of the Africana Studies Department, professor of Africana studies and political science, and one of three inaugural Royce Professors of Teaching Excellence at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Bogues earned a Ph.D. in 1994 at the University of the West Indies, Mona, where he taught courses in radical political theory.  Widely recognized as a top scholar in Caribbean intellectual history and political thought, he has organized several international conferences in his field and his recent book, Black Heretics, Black Prophets: Radical Political Intellectuals (Routledge, 2003) was the subject of a panel at the Fifth Annual Alain Locke conference at Howard University. Bogues is editor of Caribbean Reasonings, After Man: Towards the Human Critical Essays on Sylvia Wynter (Ian Randle Publishers, 2005), and associate editor of Small Axe, a Caribbean journal of criticism.

Dorothy Jenkins Fields, Ph.D. 1996 is founder of the Black Archives, History and Research Foundation of South Florida, Inc. A librarian, reading teacher, and educational specialist for Miami-Dade County Public Schools for 40 years, Fields was searching in 1974 for curriculum materials in preparation for the nation's bicentennial, but found no materials on South Florida's black history in any school or public library. She founded the Black Archives in 1977 to ensure preservation of manuscripts, letters, photographs, articles and other materials documenting South Florida's black community during the 19th and 20th centuries. A manuscript/photograph center is open to teachers, students, researchers, historians, and the community at-large for research and educational purposes. A certified archivist, Fields is also responsible for the restoration of several historic sites, including the landmark Lyric Theater, one of the few black-owned and -operated theaters in America during the early 20th century, the creation of the Black Heritage Trail, and the designation of the Historic Overtown Folklife Village as a National Trust "Main Street" community. Fields retired from the school system in 2004 but continues her mission to transform the once-thriving African American community of Overtown into a two-block, mixed-use marketplace, cultural district, and regional tourist attraction showcasing its legacy. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Office of Community awarded a $500,000 federal grant toward the creation of a 149-room tourist destination hotel in what some have deemed "the Harlem Renaissance of the South."

AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES AND BLACK HISTORY EXPERTS, PART 2

Keith E. Baird, Ph.D. 1982 came to New York from Barbados in 1947 and was a pioneer in teaching African history and languages in New York City schools in the early 1960s, and later as chair of African American studies at SUNY College at Buffalo and Clark Atlanta University. From 1961 to 1985 Baird served as an associate editor and writer for Freedomways Quarterly, a groundbreaking theoretical journal that published works by the leaders and artists of the African American freedom movement. Baird and his wife Dr. Mary Arnold Twining founded the Kush Museum of African and African-American Art and Antiquities, located at the Langston Hughes Institute, and co-edited Sea Island Roots: African Presence in the Carolinas and Georgia (Africa World Press, 1991), a collection of articles about the Gullah African-American communities, whose language and culture evolved from their ancestors in captivity on the isolated island plantations. Now in his 80s, Baird continues his writing and scholarship, most recently as a member of the Hutkaptah Society, a group of retired academics and other professionals who study ancient Egyptian language and culture.

Baird's daughter Diana Baird N'Diaye, Ph.D. 1997 is a cultural specialist and curator in Washington, D.C. at the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, where she creates vibrant, award-winning community- and research-based cultural exhibitions and presentation projects.  She has curated Smithsonian Folklife Festival programs and exhibitions on Senegal, Maroon communities, African immigrant culture, Bermuda, and Haiti, and coordinated program components for the Silk Road and Mali Festivals. She recently directed the Smithsonian's participation in the South African National Cultural Heritage Training and Technology Program, a collaborative training program in participatory heritage research for South Africa in partnership with Michigan State University, the Chicago Historical Society, and several South African cultural institutions. She has served on the executive board of the American Folklore Society.

AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES AND BLACK HISTORY EXPERTS, PART 3

Keith W. Jones, Ph.D. 2000 was honored for Career Achievement in Government at the 2004 Black Engineer of the Year Awards Conference, sponsored by Lockheed Martin Corporation, the Council of Engineering Deans of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and US Black Engineering & Information Technology magazine, which featured Jones in the March/April 2004 issue. Jones is lead avionics engineer in capabilities integration directorate within the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, where he has worked for more than 23 years. He is also a part-time educator, scientist, and science historian focusing on African and African-American involvement in the history of science and technology.

James M. Rose, Ph.D. 1980 served as a research consultant in the 1970s with author Alex Haley on the Kinte Library Project, a forerunner of Haley's Roots book and television miniseries. Rose is the author or co-author of numerous books on African-American genealogy, including Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy (2nd edition, 2003), the first book to provide researchers with information on resources and a methodology specific to African-American genealogy, along with specific resources for all 50 states, Canada, and the West Indies. Rose lives in Chesapeake, Virginia and is a lecturer at the Samford University Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research in Birmingham, Alabama. (See www.blackgenesis.com)

LEADERS IN HEALTH CARE AND NURSING

Rhetaugh Graves Dumas, Ph.D. 1975 served as deputy director at the National Institute of Mental Health in the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration from 1979-1981. President Clinton appointed Dumas to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission in 1996.
A past president of the American Academy of Nursing and the National League for Nursing, Dumas was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1984. Throughout her stellar career, she taught or lectured at several universities, including the Yale University School of Nursing from 1961-1974. She is vice provost emerita, dean emerita, and Lucille Cole Professor of Nursing at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. Widely known as a nursing scholar, researcher, bioethics expert, administrator, leader, and mentor, Dumas has received numerous awards and honors in recognition of her professional endeavors, including the Living Legend award from the American Academy of Nursing in 2002.

Dorothy Holland Mann, Ph.D. 1993 is a former U.S. Public Health Service regional health administrator for Region X based in Seattle, Washington, and former co-director for the City of Seattle's Violence Prevention Project in the Office of the Mayor. Currently Mann is a health policy consultant and clinical associate professor of health services in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Washington, where she is a board member for the Institute for Public Service Training for African American Men and Women. She also chairs the board of trustees of the Group Health Community Foundation, the charitable arm of Group Health Cooperative, one of the nation's largest consumer-governed integrated health care organizations, and is active with the Washington Women's Foundation, the Center for Women and Democracy, and the Benaroya Research Institute of Virginia Mason Hospital. Mann has led cross-cultural study groups to observe the health care system in the People's Republic of China, and participated in the 1985 United Nations Decade of Women Conference in Kenya.

Gloria R. Smith, Ph.D. 1979 received the 2003 International Distinguished Leadership Award from the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools, and the 2000 Trailblazer Award from the National Black Nurses Association, along with many more recognitions for her contributions to nursing, healthcare education, and public health initiatives. Before retiring in 2002, Smith was vice president for programs at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. An accomplished professor of nursing, healthcare, and public health at several colleges and universities for 28 years, Smith began her career as a public health nurse in 1955, and later served as director of the Michigan Department of Public Health. Elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1997, Smith is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Nursing, United Kingdom

INTERNATIONAL LEADERS

Portia Simpson Miller, B.A. 1997, Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters 2001, attended seminars at UI&U's Miami, Florida Academic Center as she completed her baccalaureate degree, while simultaneously attending to her duties as a Member of Parliament in Jamaica since 1989. Simpson Miler made Jamaican history on February 25, 2006 when she was elected to serve as prime minister and president of the majority ruling People's National Party. A Member of Parliament in Jamaica since 1989, Simpson Miller currently serves as minister of local government, community development, and sports. She was one of four vice presidents vying to become party president when PNP delegates voted. Unanimously approved by the full parliament, Simpson Miller will govern as Jamaica's seventh and first female prime minister, and only the third female head of state in the Caribbean, until the next general election, due constitutionally in 2007.

Biki S.V. Minyuku, Ph.D.1994 lived in political asylum for 11 years in the United States, working in the Mayor's Office of Community Services in Philadelphia while in exile from South Africa, where he had been a tenured lecturer at the University of Cape Town. Shortly after earning his doctorate, Minyuku returned to his homeland to work alongside Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu as chief executive officer of the historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission, formed under a parliamentary act to investigate gross human rights violations during conflicts that occurred between 1960 and 1994. Most recently, Minyuku served as program director for Business Against Crime, a partnership between the United States Agency for International Development and the South African government's Department of Justice in Pretoria.

IN MEMORIAM, PART 1

James Forman, Ph.D. 1982 gradually became active during the late 1950s in the expanding Southern black civil rights movement, emerging as one of the foremost black militant leaders of the era. An Air Force veteran, he enrolled at the University of Southern California in 1952, but was beaten and arrested by police in his second college semester. He transferred to Roosevelt University in Chicago and became a leader in student politics until graduating in 1957, then pursued graduate studies at Boston University. In 1961 he left his job as a substitute elementary school teacher to help sharecroppers in Tennessee who were evicted for registering to vote. That summer, he and other Freedom Riders went to jail for protesting segregated facilities in North Carolina. Forman became executive secretary from 1961 to 1966 of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which brought almost a thousand young volunteers, black and white, to register voters in the South in 1964. Forman eventually immersed himself in scholarship, research, and writing, but remained politically active, and despite weakness from his long struggle with cancer, he attended the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Forman triggered national headline stories when he died in Washington, D.C., in January 2005.

Lincoln Ragsdale, Ph.D. 1989 and former UI&U trustee, was still in high school at the beginning of World War II when he was accepted into the Army Pre-Aviation Cadet Program, achieved the highest ranking, Cadet Captain, at Tuskegee Army Airfield in Alabama, and became a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, 450 black pilots who served in the European Theater. Originally assigned as escorts to protect white bomber pilots because commanders doubted that black pilots could fight, the Tuskegee pilots proved themselves extraordinarily capable by war's end. Still, the service maintained separate bases and camps for the black airmen. In 1945 President Truman selected 19-year-old Ragsdale as one of 11 "colored" airmen in a test case to see if integration in the service would work. Commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and assigned to Phoenix's Luke Army Air Force Base as a single-engine fighter pilot, he endured the racial epithets of his white roommate, and the two eventually came to an uneasy truce after their flight squadron won an award for outstanding achievement, helping to end the practice of separate Air Force units based on skin color. During the 1950s and 1960s, Ragsdale and other black leaders worked tirelessly trying to convince Maricopa County employers to hire blacks. He led marches and sit-ins that changed the fabric of civil rights in the Phoenix area. As first vice president of Maricopa County's chapter of the NAACP, Ragsdale hosted Dr. Martin Luther King during his visit to Phoenix in 1964. Later in life, Ragsdale used his many leadership positions to help African-Americans achieve economic and educational prowess. An investor and consultant, Ragsdale was president and CEO of Valley Life Insurance Group (with companies in Louisiana, Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, and Texas) and International Investment Company. He was also board chair of Universal Memorial Centers with two funeral homes in Phoenix.  He served as an advisor to President Reagan on Small and Minority Business Ownership from 1982-88, and received the City of Phoenix Human Rights Award for 25 years of service to the community in 1989. Ragsdale died in 1995 at age 68.

Marian Gray Secundy, Ph.D. 1980 was a nationally renowned scholar in bioethics, professor of community health and family medicine, and founding director of the clinical ethics program at Howard University School of Medicine, Washington, D.C., for 30 years. In 1999, Secundy became the first director of the Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Healthcare in Alabama, established as a partial response to President Clinton's apology for the U.S. Public Health Service Study on Syphilis conducted at Tuskegee from 1932 to 1972. During her three years at the center, Secundy explored initiatives with people of color around health disparities, and worked on public policy at local, regional, and national levels. She returned to Howard University as professor emerita in 2002, shortly before she died at age 64.

Lennie-Marie Pickens Tolliver, Ph.D. 1979 served as Commissioner on Aging, Department of Health and Human Services during the Reagan administration from 1981-1984. A social worker in New Jersey during the 1950s, Tolliver became an assistant professor of field work, School of Social Service Administration, at the University of Chicago from 1961-64 , and worked as a caseworker for the Family Service Bureau, United Charities, Chicago. From 1964 on she spent the rest of her academic career at the University of Oklahoma as professor, associate director, and graduate program coordinator in the School of Social Work. Tolliver served as vice president of the Oklahoma City Urban League. She was chairperson of the Oklahoma Black Republican Council from 1972-78 and alternate delegate to the 1980 Republican National Convention. In 1986, the Lennie-Marie Tolliver Alternative Care Center was established in Oklahoma City. Tolliver died in 1999 at age 70.

IN MEMORIAM, Part 2

Edward Bonnemere, Ph.D. 1977 was considered one of the foremost composers of religious music, including five Roman Catholic masses, several settings of Lutheran liturgy, and many hymns and preludes. Over the years, Bonnemere played with such noted musicians as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Nat King Cole. Raised in Harlem in the Catholic faith, he performed at churches and religious events across the country and around the world for many varied faiths, including the regularly scheduled jazz vespers and jazz masses at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in New York City. Bonnemere was also a highly accomplished educator who devoted more than 30 years to teaching music in New York City public schools. He died at age 77 in 1999.

James P. Lyke, Ph.D. 1981 was Archbishop of Atlanta and the highest ranking black bishop in the U.S. Catholic Church when he died in 1992 at age 53, after a brief battle with inoperable cancer. Lyke was a high school religion teacher in Ohio in 1968, when he requested a transfer to Memphis, Tennessee after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination there. Credited for innovative work in black Catholic liturgy both at the parish level and nationally, Lyke became president of the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus in the 1970s, and published the groundbreaking 816-page Lead Me, Guide Me: The African-American Catholic Hymnal. He came to Atlanta in 1990, first as apostolic administrator and then as archbishop, appointed to lead the community beyond the trauma of his predecessor's resignation amid scandal. Many credited Lyke's leadership for helping to restore morale and bring healing to Atlanta's Catholic community.

Clarence J. Rivers, Ph.D. 1978 made history in 1956 as the first African-American priest ordained in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio. An internationally known composer of American Catholic music, his 1963 "American Mass Program" was a radical change in the Catholic liturgy. At the 1964 annual meeting of the National Liturgical Conference, Rivers led the singing of the first English Mass after the Vatican Council, and around that time, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra performed his composition "The Brotherhood of Man" at its third ecumenical concert. Rivers later served as director of the department of culture and worship for the National Office for Black Catholics and published three books and numerous articles that focused on the African-American experience and culture in Catholic worship. Rivers passed away in 2004 at age 73.

The brief news items provided in the weekly UI&U Celebrates Notable Alumni during Black History Month emails are a small sampling of notable alumni, many of whom have appeared in previous UI&U publications. If you know of other notable alumni in any fields we should be aware of, or wish to share your updated news with the Union community in the online Network Cross Currents or Open Book, please see (http://www.tui.edu/news/network/).