Christopher Edley Jr.
Christopher Edley Jr.
Christopher Edley Jr., a prominent legal and public policy scholar who co-founded the Harvard Civil Rights Project with Dr. Gary Orfield, died in May He was 71.
Edley spent more than two decades as a professor at Harvard Law School, where he and Orfield founded the Civil Rights Project in the aftermath of a 1996 court ruling that squelched race-conscious admission policies at many universities. The case stemmed from a reverse affirmative action lawsuit filed by white student Cheryl Hopwood, who was denied admission to the University of Texas law school. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled against the UT practices.
In 2004, Edley joined UC Berkely as dean of the law school, but stepped down from the role in 2013 and took a medical leave to battle prostate cancer. He returned as the Honorable William H. Orrick, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law and, in 2016, co-founded Opportunity Institute with Ann O’Leary, who served as chief of staff to California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Berkeley-based nonprofit organization promotes social equity through education, using a cradle-to-career reach across four distinct demographic groups.
In 2012, Diverse honored Edley and Orfield with the Dr. John Hope Franklin Award, the annual recognition for excellence in higher education named after the pioneering Black
Nathan Hare
Dr. Nathan Hare, who was known as the father of Black Studies, died in June at the age of 91.
In 1968, Hare was hired at San Francisco State College (now known as San Francisco State University) as the first program coordinator of the school’s Black Studies program, the first program of its kind in the United States.
He is credited with coining the term “ethnic studies” to replace “minority studies” and was a productive researcher and scholar, publishing a number of books with his late wife, Dr. Julia Hare.
The two founded the Black Think Tank in 1979 to address some of the problems and challenges within the African American community. Ten years earlier, he founded The Black Scholar: A Journal of Black Studies and Research.
Dr. Nathan Hare
A graduate of Langston University, Hare earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago.
Doris Yvonne Wilkinson
Doris Yvonne Wilkinson, the first African American female appointed to a full time position at the University of Kentucky in 1967, died in June at age 88.
Wilkinson earned several professional civic honors and awards over her career, writing, publishing, and reviewing several professional articles and books. A Ford Foundation Fellow at Harvard University, she was the first African American elected to the Hall of Distinguished Alumni.
She earned master’s and doctoral degrees from Case Western Reserve University as well as an MPH from Johns Hopkins Universit
Wilkinson taught at Kent State University in Ohio and later joined the Department of Sociology faculty at Kentucky, where she served as director of the Project on African American Heritage.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
Bernice Johnson Reagon, a civil rights activist who co-founded The Freedom Singers and later started the African American vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, died in July at the age of 81. The future songleader was born in southwest Georgia, the daughter of a Baptist minister. She was admitted to a historically Black public college, Albany State, at the age of 16 and studied music. Albany, Ga., would become an important center of the civil rights movement when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested there in 1962, causing the media to descend on the town. She became a leading scholar of Black musical life. In 1974, she received a music history appointment at the Smithsonian; a year later, she added the title of Dr. after receiving a Ph.D. from Howard University; in 1989, she won a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. In 1994, she created a 26-part NPR documentary called Wade in the Water that won a Peabody award. And in 1995, she was awarded the Presidential Medal and the Charles Frankel Prize.
Sheila Jackson Lee
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, a fierce champion for higher education, died in July at the age of 74, after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
Jackson Lee represented the 18th Congressional District of Texas and served nearly 30 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Her legislative initiatives included the Sentencing Reform Act, the George Floyd Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act, The RAISE Act, The Fair Chance for Youth Act, the Kimberly Vaughan Firearm Safe Storage Act, Kaleif’s Law, the American RISING Act. Jackson Lee served as the Democratic Chief Deputy Whip and was a senior member of the House’s Judiciary, Homeland Security, and Budget committees. She was appointed the first female Ranking Member of the Judiciary Subcommittee for Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.
She successfully advocated for the passage of the Violence Against Women’s Act and was the author and lead sponsor of the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act. She also introduced the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Reauthorization and Bullying Prevention and Intervention Act, the Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act.
Sybil Haydel Morial
In September, Sybil Haydel Morial died at age 91. Haydel Morial was a member of Xavier University’s class of 1952, a known champion of civil rights, and a long-serving administrator at the historically Black Catholic university in New Orleans. Haydel Morial began her higher education at Xavier. She completed her undergraduate studies at Boston University. She was quoted in an interview for The Xavier Story Project saying, “Even though we loved the freedoms of the North, we all wanted to go back to the South to be a part of the change when it came. And we did.”
In 1955, she married fellow Xavierite and would-be New Orleans Mayor Ernest “Dutch” Morial (’51) with whom she embarked on a life of civic engagement in the fight for equity and equality. Her son, Marc H. Morial, the president of the National Urban League, also served as New Orleans Mayor from 1994-2002. Haydel Morial returned to Xavier in 1977 and served for 28 years before retiring in 2005 as its vice president for external affairs.
Amir Abdur-Rahim
Amir Abdur-Rahim, the head basketball coach for the University of South Florida, died in October following complications from a medical procedure. He was 43 and is survived by his wife and three children.
He was a rising star within collegiate basketball. Abdur-Rahim’s 2022-23 team at Kennesaw State went 26-9 and made the NCAA Tournament, catapulting him to the head coach position at USF.
Abdur-Rahim was born in Marietta, Georgia, as the youngest of thirteen children. His older brother Shareef Abdur-Rahim was an NBA All-Star and is the president of the NBA’s G-League.
Prior to his arrival at Kennesaw State, he had coaching stints at Charleston, Murray State and Texas A&M as an assistant
Dr. Margaree Seawright Crosby
Dr. Margaree Seawright Crosby made history when she became the first African American woman professor to earn tenure at Clemson University’s College of Education.
Crosby, who was 82, died in November. A committed activist who was part of the “Greenville 8”, Crosby participated in sit-ins in the 1960s to protest segregation at the Greenville library while she was a student at South Carolina State University. She and seven of her peers including famed civil rights activist, the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, selected a book and sat down to read it and was handcuffed and jailed by the local police.
Crosby was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated and the first female member of the board of trustees at the Greenville Hospital System.
Donna Marie Manges
Donna Manges, a senior client manager at Cox Matthews & Associates, the publisher of Diverse, died in September. Manges grew up and was educated in Stamford and at Pace University. She went on to have a successful career in educational publishing and moved to Virginia. She paved the way for SIRS (New Canaan), The Chronicle of Higher Education and Diverse: Issues In Higher Education. As co-founder of Women and Wine, Volunteer Alexandria she thrived as a connector. Her entrepreneurial pursuit was Global Education Collections which she founded in 2016.
Frank Burtnett
Dr. Frank Burtnett, a counselor, educator, consultant, and author whose career has been dedicated to educational and career development issues, as well as service to the profession through management roles in professional counseling organizations died this Fall. He served as the Executive Director of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), Associate Executive Director and other professional roles with the American Counseling Association (ACA), and as President and Principal Investigator at Education Now. He was a longtime contributor to Diverse: Issues In Higher Education and served as an adjunct professor in counselor education at Marymount University since 2006.
