Morehouse College Research Articles

Rethinking the postdoctoral training experience: Fellowships In Research and Science Teaching (FIRST)

FIRST is a collaborative project in postdoctoral training at Emory University, Morehouse School of Medicine, Morehouse College, Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University. FIRST is funded as part of the Institutional Research and Career Development Awards in the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to promote research‐oriented teaching at minority‐serving institutions (MSIs) and enhance research skills in developing scientists. FIRST was developed to foster cross‐institutional relationships and increase the number of underrepresented minorities in life sciences careers. FIRST is distinct in that it combines outstanding postdoctoral training at a top‐tier research institution with a mentored undergraduate teaching experience at an MSI. Fellows benefit from this approach where they develop broad skills in two complementary and critical aspects of the academic environment. Compared to traditional postdocs, the over 100 current and former FIRST fellows publish at a similar rate as their peers, are more successful in obtaining permanent academic positions, especially at MSIs, and receive equivalent external funding. Finally, the program fosters a supportive social and intellectual network of scholars during and beyond the three years of the fellowship, while providing strong role models for young African‐Americans in the formative years of their science education.

Great Migrations, Great Stories, Great History?

Great Migrations, Great Stories, Great History? James N. Gregory (bio) Isabel Wilkerson . The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. New York: Random House, 2010. x + 622 pp. Notes and index. $30.00. There have been many great migrations in American history, not to mention global history. But for the last half century the term connects most readily to the twentieth-century relocation of African Americans from the farms of the South to the cities of the North and West. In the six decades following the outbreak of World War I, some six million black Southerners left that region, dramatically altering the nation's racial landscape. By the mid-1970s, nearly half of all African Americans lived outside the South. But the Great Migration was great less because of numbers than because of impact. The black Southerners who moved north and west transformed cities, rearranged political and racial systems, and, as a result, rebalanced the nation's regions, easing some of the distinctions between them. Many historians have tackled this great subject, along with legions of demographers, sociologists, and economists. Not surprisingly, journalists have also taken up the topic. In 1991 Nicholas Lemann produced the best-known of these books, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America.1 Now a second journalist, Isabel Wilkerson, has answered with The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, putting forth a different perspective. Lehmann, concerned about the urban crisis of the 1980s, concluded that the Great Migration was a disappointment; Wilkerson sees it as a triumph of hope and new beginnings. Journalists have different aims and methods than academic historians. They look for compelling stories and vivid personalities, preferring to build narratives around biographical subjects. That can be a challenge when the topic involves the experiences of multitudes. They also prefer to do their research through personal interviews rather than using materials, even oral histories, gathered by others. That too can be a challenge unless the history is quite recent. Isabel Wilkerson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism while with the New York Times, has written a gorgeous book that demonstrates the art of great writing and great storytelling. It is impossible not to admire the literary qualities [End Page 96] of this near-best seller that has earned glowing reviews in newspaper after newspaper. As history, I have some reservations, mostly because of limitations that derive from the journalistic-historical method. Years of research went into the book, including an extensive bibliography of works by historians and demographers along with an enormous number of personal interviews. Wilkerson talked with nearly 1,200 individuals before deciding to base her book on three people whose life stories give the book not just its spine but most of its bulk. This means that she focuses tightly on the personal dimensions of relocation, not on the great migration's impact on communities, politics, or culture. The three individuals she has chosen represent some of the important class, gender, and geographic variations among migrants. Ida Mae Brandon grew up poor in rural Mississippi, married George Gladney at age sixteen and moved into a tiny sharecropper's cabin. For seven years, she and her husband worked in the cotton fields. She was pregnant with her third child when the family moved to Chicago in 1937, part of a Deep South to Upper Midwest stream of migrants. George Starling and his unhappy wife Inez began in Lake County, Florida, "a place of cocksure southern sheriffs, overworked pickers, root doctors, pool hustlers, bootleggers, jackleg preachers, barely a soul you could trust, and a color line as hard as Mississippi's" (p. 48). He graduated from high school, briefly attended college, and then joined his father and neighbors working in the orange groves. In 1944 he tried to organize a union and soon had to flee for his life, catching a train to New York, becoming part of the northbound exodus out of the southern Atlantic region. The son of school teachers, Robert Pershing Foster grew up in Monroe, Louisiana, attended Morehouse College in Atlanta and medical school in Nashville, after which he spent four...

Interview

Interview Gregory Powell (bio) Interview How long does it take to shoe a mule? The farmer answers “five winks—seven winks, tops.” He compares shoeing a mule to shoeing the moon. The college graduate, I remark that the moon is footless. “Have you walked the moon?” No. But there is no mention in the current literature of the moon requesting a pair of tube socks. I’m sure. I’ve consulted the literature. “Did you write those books you read?” “You believe words that you have not lived?” [End Page 504] Gregory Powell Gregory Powell currently works as a labor and employment law attorney with the National Labor Relations Board. He graduated from Morehouse College in 1987 with a degree in journalism, and graduated from law school in 1994 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2004, he earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa. His poetry has been previously published in Callaloo, Langston Hughes Review, storysouth, Arkansas Review, Cairn, Antietam Review, and other journals. He recently completed his first collection of poetry, ShotgunHouse-Guitar. Copyright © 2011 Gregory powell

The Jackie Robinson Story A Reflection of Its Era

The in question is Jackie Robinson. In the mid-199os, Spike Lee attempted to mount a celluloid biography of the Brooklyn Dodgers legend who, as a twenty-eight-year-old rookie in 1947, integrated Major League Baseball (MLB). (1) Lee's film would not have been the first Robinson biopic. Three years after debuting with the Dodgers, Jackie himself starred in The Jackie Robinson Story, a Hollywood life story that deals with issues which transcend singles, doubles, and dingers, making the team and winning the big game. The Jackie Robinson Story is very much a product of its era: the dawn of the civil rights movement. When it was released in 1950, 21-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. had recently received his BA from Morehouse College and was a first-year student at Crozer Theological Seminary. Brown v. Board of Education and the signing of the Voting Rights Act into law were respectively four and fifteen years in the future. No one could foretell the scope of the demand by black Americans to share equal rights with white Americans. (2) And Hollywood--after years of marginalizing African American characters as mammies, housemaids, janitors, and Pullman porters, who comically wrecked the English language--finally began acknowledging that racism was intrinsic to the American experience. (3) Body and Soul (1947), a classic boxing film, features an African American supporting character--an ex-champion named Ben Chaplin (Canada Lee) who is articulate, soulful, and respected by the main character, Charlie Davis (John Garfield). When Ben talks of what it felt like to strut down Harlem's Lenox Avenue after winning a fight, there at least is the acknowledgement that he thrived within a community of his own. (4) But the era's other progressive, well-intentioned films--for example, Intruder in the Dust, Home of the Brave, and Lost Boundaries, all released in 1949--feature sympathetic, victimized black characters who exist entirely in Caucasian worlds. Even though they are more three-dimensional than the stereotypical Stepin Fetchit, and are as complex and tormented as Caucasian characters, they are portrayed through the sensibilities of white screenwriters and directors--and, as in Body and Soul, they are portrayed in relation to Caucasian characters. They are baited by racist white villains and supported/rescued by fair-minded white heroes. (5) This same value system exists in The Jackie Robinson Story. All the film's makers are Caucasian, and the individual most responsible for its content is Branch Rickey, the Dodgers general manager and powerbroker who signed Jackie and brought him to Brooklyn. (6) As it highlights Robinson's struggle, the film acknowledges the reality of racism in America. But the scenario stresses that, in due course, fairness will prevail. If you believe otherwise, just look at Jackie Robinson. He is black. And here he is, playing major-league baseball. In America, for every exclusionary bigot there is a man who is fair and humane, a man who will judge Jackie solely on his performance between the foul lines. In other words, for every racist, there is a Branch Rickey. Back in the late 194os, given his accomplishment and celebrity, it seemed that Jackie Robinson would have been a natural subject for a screen biography. In fact, just after Jackie's MLB debut, Lawrence Taylor, a baseball fan and screenwriter whose credits included a couple of Philo Vance mysteries and several other B films, penned a screenplay about Jackie's struggles and triumphs. But Taylor found no takers for his script. The reason: its primary character was African American. The writer reported that several unnamed major studios were interested in his script, but only if it was rewritten and fictionalized to include a white athlete/hero who mentored Jackie--one who, in essence, would play Svengali to Jackie's Trilby. (7) But the production of films like Intruder in the Dust, Home of the Brave, and Lost Boundaries--as well as Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and Crossfire (1947), both of which exposed the insidiousness of anti-Semitism--augured well for Taylor. …

Abstract 974: Fellowships in Research and Science Teaching (FIRST): Innovative postdoctoral training for aspiring academic scientists

Abstract Fellowships in Research and Science Teaching (FIRST) is a successful, three-year postdoctoral program at Emory University that combines traditional postdoctoral research training with mentored teaching instruction. Supported by the Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA, K12) in the Division of Minority Opportunities in Research (MORE), FIRST encourages teaching experiences at minority serving institutions (MSIs) in the Atlanta University Center (Clark-Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and Spelman College). Fellows receive formalized instruction in pedagogy through a course entitled A Class within a Class, which provides training in innovative teaching techniques, use of technology in the classroom, course development and assessment, as well as peer-evaluation of lecture styles. Participation in the FIRST program creates a unique training experience that prepares fellows to become successful biomedical researchers as well as effective instructors. Despite having dual responsibilities during postdoctoral training, a study comparing 114 FIRST fellows to 500 traditional postdocs showed that FIRST fellows continue to publish in peer-reviewed journals at the same rate or above traditional postdoctoral fellows. In addition, FIRST fellows continue to pursue academic research careers and receive NIH grant funding. Along with the goals of the IRACDA programs, FIRST fellows have established research affiliations with Emory University and MSIs thus creating a collaborative network between research-intensive intuitions and under-represented minority liberal arts colleges. NIH/NIGMS IRACDA Grant 5K12GM000680 Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 974.

FIRST: Fellowships in Research & Science Teaching: A differential approach to postdoctoral training

As part of the IRACDA (Institutional Research and Career Development Awards, NIGMS) initiative, the FIRST program was developed in order to increase underrepresented minorities in postdoctoral fellowship positions in the life sciences, as well as to increase research oriented teaching at minority serving institutions (MSIs). This is accomplished through a collaborative effort, with the majority of the postdoctoral fellows conducting research at Emory University or Morehouse School of Medicine, while completing their teaching component at one of the historically black colleges in the Atlanta University Center (Morehouse College, Spelman College, or Clark‐Atlanta University). FIRST fellows, therefore, have a research‐intensive experience and at the same time have an opportunity to engage in teaching activities, an experience quite unusual compared to that of most traditionally trained postdocs. FIRST fellows are at least as successful by any measure as a traditionally trained postdoc. A study of 114 FIRST fellows compared to over 500 traditional postdoctoral fellows revealed that not only do FIRST fellows publish in scientific journals at the same rate as the comparison group, they obtain more academic jobs; receive NIH grants at a comparable rate; contribute to diversity at Emory; and to the faculty at the MSIs.

Significant Decline of the Force of Contraction in Tendon Reflexes as Early as Three Weeks Following the Onset of Diabetes in STZ Diabetic Rats.

Event Abstract Back to Event Significant Decline of the Force of Contraction in Tendon Reflexes as Early as Three Weeks Following the Onset of Diabetes in STZ Diabetic Rats. Brandon Sowell1*, Corbin Darling1, Joshua Jones1, Jordan Johnson1, Trevano Dean1 and Valerie Haftel1 1 Morehouse College, Biology Dep, United States Diabetic Neuropathy-resulting in: pain, a lost of sensation, balance, and change in gait-has an effect on proprioreceptor function and the force of contraction through the medial gastrocnemious muscle in rats with STZ induced diabetes. An evaluation of propioreceptor function was made stimulating a monosynaptic pathway through the medial gastrocnemious, then recording the muscle’s force of contraction, and electromyogram. The study used four groups of Wistar female rats: untreated, three week, six week, and vehicle-injected. The acheilies tendon was attached to a servomotor that vibrated the muscle at frequencies of ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred, one hundred sixty-seven, two hundred fifty, and five hundred hertz, with amplitude of eighty microns. The experiments showed an overall decrease in the force of contraction through the medial gastrocnemious with distinct effects on the muscle at the various vibrations through other measurements. This loss of force contraction was noticed as early as three weeks, and as late as six weeks following the onset of diabetes. The implications of the study show how soon diabetes can have an effect on the nervous system, and may provide a foundation for further investigation into the finite functioning of muscle fibers, propioreceptors, motor neurons and their interrelations, in STZ diabetic rats. Conference: 2010 South East Nerve Net (SENN) and Georgia/South Carolina Neuroscience Consortium (GASCNC) conferences, Atlanta , United States, 5 Mar - 7 Mar, 2010. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Posters Citation: Sowell B, Darling C, Jones J, Johnson J, Dean T and Haftel V (2010). Significant Decline of the Force of Contraction in Tendon Reflexes as Early as Three Weeks Following the Onset of Diabetes in STZ Diabetic Rats.. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: 2010 South East Nerve Net (SENN) and Georgia/South Carolina Neuroscience Consortium (GASCNC) conferences. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.04.00079 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 18 Mar 2010; Published Online: 18 Mar 2010. * Correspondence: Brandon Sowell, Morehouse College, Biology Dep, Atlanta, United States, bsowell7@yahoo.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Brandon Sowell Corbin Darling Joshua Jones Jordan Johnson Trevano Dean Valerie Haftel Google Brandon Sowell Corbin Darling Joshua Jones Jordan Johnson Trevano Dean Valerie Haftel Google Scholar Brandon Sowell Corbin Darling Joshua Jones Jordan Johnson Trevano Dean Valerie Haftel PubMed Brandon Sowell Corbin Darling Joshua Jones Jordan Johnson Trevano Dean Valerie Haftel Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Edmund Jenkins of South Carolina

Edmund Thornton Jenkins was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1894, one of the eight children of Lena James Jenkins and her husband, the Reverend Daniel Joseph Jenkins. They had established the Orphan Aid Society in 1891, better known as the Jenkins Orphanage. As well as their own children, they took responsibility for over five hundred waifs and strays. Most were placed in a farm-reformatory in Ladson, near the city, where they grew vegetables and obtained a basic education. Others were lodged in the Old Marine Hospital on Franklin Street, Charleston, and there were taught to read and write, and in practical skills which, while destined to support them when independent adults, provided the orphanage with revenue. These included bread making, jobbing printing and a weekly newspaper (the Charleston Messenger), shoe repairs, laundry, and music making. Choirs, up to five bands, jubilee singers, and girl duos and trios brought attention to the orphanage through public performances, traveling to Florida, as well as to New York and elsewhere in the North. They gathered alms and practical support, and collected one quarter of the funds required to keep the institution solvent. The city eventually provided some money, reaching $1,000 a year in the 1910s--for the orphans were black, and city, county, and state were white-run and almost blind to the needs of the African Americans who made up half of the state's population at that time. Skillfully negotiating between Charleston's powerful white elite and the extreme poverty of so many of his people, the Reverend Jenkins was an exemplary figure to the youngsters. Black-led churches had leading roles in Southern life, as did charitable Northerners who founded, funded, and taught at many of the region's black colleges and schools. The elite among the African Americans of Charleston attended Avery Institute, and had lessons in the Eurocentric tradition. Edmund Jenkins went to Avery, then to the Atlanta Baptist College in Georgia (later Morehouse College). Already able to play violin, piano, and trumpet, Jenkins came under the influence of music tutor Kemper Harreld and future author Benjamin Brawley when in Atlanta. Harreld, whose wife Claudia taught German, classics, and piano in Atlanta, was fully conversant with European art music. Born in 1885 in Muncie, Indiana, he had moved to Atlanta in 1911 to head the music department. Edmund Jenkins was his favorite pupil. Historians have investigated African-American music with an emphasis on jazz and blues and as a consequence the contributions and values of musical people like the Harrelds have been overlooked. In their house were violins, cellos, a viola, and a piano as well as much sheet music. The college had many instruments, and its president John Hope had two sons who played the clarinet and the trombone. Harreld and other residents of black Atlanta gave music lessons privately. Claudia's brother Lucien White was the music critic of the well-respected New York Age (Green 1990, 179-181). Among the works that were part of the Harrelds' collection as well as that of the college orchestra (which Harreld conducted and included Jenkins on violin), were the works of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Born in London in 1875, the son of a Sierra Leonean doctor, Coleridge-Taylor's fame started when he was at the Royal College of Music in the 1890s, and his choral work Song of Hiawatha (1897-1900) entered the repertory of singing groups all over the English-speaking world. Harreld, when living in Chicago, met and worked with him during a 1906 tour, and his creations were included in programs performed by several of Harreld's Atlanta concert and choral groups (Green 1990, 193; McGinty 2001, 221). This understanding of orchestral music, the several instruments that he had mastered, and his experience in helping with the orphanage bands formed Edmund Jenkins, who traveled to England in May 1914. He was a member of the orphanage band, employed to entertain at the Anglo-American Exposition in London. …

Working on the short grass: A qualitative analysis of fundraiser roles and experiences at public historically Black colleges and universities

The former president of Morehouse College, Dr Benjamin E. Mays, once said, ‘Higher education for Blacks has always been in a precarious position. These institutions were founded on short grass financially, and they live today on short grass.’ Today, many public and private historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have found success in fundraising endeavors, with the schools taking advantage of the opportunities extended to them. Although these colleges are not on the same long, financial grass as are other institutions with larger endowments, larger advancement staff and larger alumni pools, the advancement offices and top fundraisers at public HBCUs are striding toward greater fiduciary goals and heights. This paper examines the experiences of 27 institutional advancement officers at public HBCUs. The practitioners interviewed believed that they were in the dominant coalition that guided the university's decisions. However, practitioners were constrained or limited in their roles by the lack of financial or personnel support for their function. The fundraisers enacted the expert prescriber, problem-solving facilitator and technician roles described by Kelly (1998).

A prototype compartmental model of blood pressure distribution

Abstract We consider a system of differential equations, the behavior of whose solutions possesses several properties characteristic of the blood pressure distribution. The system can be used for a compartmental modeling [R. Bellman, Mathematical Methods in Medicine, in: Series in Modern Applied Mathematics, vol. 1, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1983; J.A. Jacquez, Compartmental Analysis in Biology and Medicine, Elsevier, New York, 1972] of the cardiovascular system. It admits a unique bounded solution such that all coordinates of the solution are separated from zero by positive numbers, and which is periodic, eventually periodic or almost periodic depending on the moments of heart contraction. Appropriate numerical simulations are provided. Some of the results were announced at The Fifth International Conference on Dynamic Systems and Applications held at Morehouse College, Atlanta, in 2007 [M.U. Akhmet, G. Bekmukhambetova, On modeling of blood pressure distribution, in: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Dynamic Systems and Applications held at Morehouse College, Atlanta, USA, May 30–June 2, 2007, Proc. Dyn. Syst. Appl., 5 (2008) 17–20].

Benjamin Mays, Global Ecumenism, and Local Religious Segregation

Born in South Carolina in 1894 to tenant farmer parents, Benjamin Mays made the improbable rise to a distinguished career spent at the administrative helm of two black educational institutions, first, the School of Religion at Howard University during the 1930s, and then, from 1940 to 1967, at Morehouse College. From both positions, Mays became one of the most prominent and influential black theologians, educators, and public intellectuals of the twentieth century. Memories of Mays' stature have been eclipsed by the outpouring of attention to his Morehouse student Martin Luther King Jr. who claimed him as his mentor and whom Mays would later eulogize in 1968. Unlike his student, Mays was blessed with a long life that stretched from Jim Crow to black power. Mays lived out the complexities of being a southern black liberal Protestant who believed that black and white churches should function as progressive political agents, resting on the moral foundation of global Christian universalism and an enduring faith in the institution of American democracy. Mays advocated a church universal that could build a worldwide movement for social justice. At the same time, he understood the innately local nature of religious and racial policy and practice. He argued that Christianity ought to be color-blind and desegregated while at the same time he adhered to a belief in the political necessity of black controlled institutions, especially churches and colleges. Still, Mays did not believe only in the power of the sacred or of private institutions; he coupled that with a faith in an interventionist egalitarian state believing that both church and state were essential to achieving racial equality. Mays' early and eager engagement with global religious organizations provided him with opportunities to travel the world. Many other prominent politically engaged African American religious intellectuals in the pre-civil rights era came to a concept of global politics in just this way, through travels to and participation in ecumenical world gatherings. In this way, Mays' life is more emblematic than it is unusual. For that reason, our understandings of African Americans and international politics also must make way for religious universalism as one route to a compelling critique of colonialism and of the oppression of people of color around the globe. Toward the end of his life, Mays came to understand better that local churches, black and white, served not only as religious sanctuaries but as racial and political ones as well. As a whole, neither blacks nor whites wanted to sacrifice institutions with distinctive cultural, theological, and political natures; born and bred in segregation, each group's churches had grown its own separate way and neither group wanted them to be subsumed in a quest for liberal universalism or color-blind Christianity.

Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center, Custodian of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection: “Until Further Notice”

On June 23, 2006, the American Library Association was holding its Annual Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, the first major conference to return to the city post Hurricane Katrina. My scheduled visit of four days was abruptly cut short as a result of two communications: a call from Walter Massey, President of More-house College in Atlanta, Georgia, and an e-mail from William Potter, Dean of the University of Georgia Libraries. By the time the day was over, I learned that a collection of manuscripts and books documenting many of the writings, speeches, and notes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. . . .

The "Long Movement" as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies

Previous articleNext article No AccessSymposium on African American HistoriographyThe "Long Movement" as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom StudiesSundiata Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence LangSundiata Keita Cha-Jua Search for more articles by this author and Clarence Lang Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of African American History Volume 92, Number 2Spring 2007 A journal of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/JAAHv92n2p265 Views: 1346Total views on this site Citations: 8Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright ASALHPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Ashley Howard Whose Streets? Wielding Urban Revolts as Political Tools, The Journal of African American History 107, no.22 (May 2022): 238–265.https://doi.org/10.1086/719000Danielle Wiggins “Save Auburn Avenue for Our Black Heritage”: Debating Development in Post–Civil Rights Atlanta, The Journal of African American History 107, no.11 (Mar 2022): 79–104.https://doi.org/10.1086/717346Mary Frances Berry On the Editorship of The Journal of African American History, The Journal of African American History 102, no.33 (Mar 2018): 301–306.https://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.102.3.0301 Alec Fazackerley Hickmott Black Land, Black Capital: Rural Development in the Shadows of the Sunbelt South, 1969–1976, The Journal of African American History 101, no.44 (Nov 2017): 504–534.https://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.101.4.0504 Larry O. Rivers The Morehouse College Scholar-Activist Pedagogy and Boston Personalism, The Journal of African American History 101, no.44 (Nov 2017): 535–546.https://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.101.4.0535 Jonathan B. Fenderson "When the Revolution Comes": New Perspectives on Black Student Activism and the Black Studies Movement, The Journal of African American History 98, no.44 (Nov 2017): 607–622.https://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.98.4.0607 Philip F. Rubio "Who Divided the Church?": African American Postal Workers Fight Segregation in the Postal Unions, 1939-1962, The Journal of African American History 94, no.22 (Nov 2017): 172–199.https://doi.org/10.1086/JAAHv94n2p172 V. P. Franklin Jackanapes: Reflections on the Legacy of the Black Panther Party for the Hip Hop Generation, The Journal of African American History 92, no.44 (Nov 2017): 553–560.https://doi.org/10.1086/JAAHv92n4p553

Design and Implementation of an Interdisciplinary Leadership Studies Minor at an Historically Black, Liberal Arts College

This article summarizes the design, implementation, and current status of an undergraduate interdisciplinary leadership studies minor at Morehouse College. The college’s primary mission is to “develop men with disciplined minds who will lead lives of leadership, service, and self-realization,” as well as provide students with an understanding of the African American heritage and cultural experience. The leadership studies minor was designed as a place within the academic curriculum of the college program for students to learn about and reflect upon the study, practice, and interdisciplinary nature of leadership, its theoretical and historical foundations, and explore critical ethical leadership challenges that impact civil society with special emphasis on issues as they relate to African Americans, their heritage, and their cultural experience. Program results to date and the future of the minor in the college’s academic curriculum are also discussed.

Developing Effective Programs and Services for College Men: New Directions for Student Services (Number 107) (review)

Reviewed by: Developing Effective Programs and Services for College Men: New Directions for Student Services (Number 107) Shaun R. Harper and Frank Harris III Developing Effective Programs and Services for College Men: New Directions for Student Services (Number 107) Gar E. Kellom (Ed.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004, 112 pages, $27.00 (softcover) Gender discourse in higher education, particularly within student affairs, is unarguably lopsided. That is, conversations and corresponding institutional responses have focused almost exclusively on the needs of and challenges faced by female students and women in academe. The continuous illumination of sexism and gendered institutional structures that disadvantage women is both necessary and important. The introduction of feminist perspectives and critiques has enabled practitioners and faculty to better understand the developmental needs and unique experiences of women, which in turn has led to the provision of essential resources and services on campuses across the country. While women's concerns merit ongoing consideration and perhaps even greater attention, we argue here, as we have done elsewhere, that current and future scholarship on gender must become more inclusive of college men. Sociologists and leading men's studies scholars Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner (2004) contend that men have long been treated as if we have no gender. A cursory glance at research and published perspectives on gender issues in higher education and student affairs would confirm this assertion. Thus, Developing Effective Programs and Services for College Men is a much-needed contribution to a longstanding gap in the literature. Edited by Gar E. Kellom, Vice President [End Page 487] of Student Development at Saint John's University, this volume brings together a diverse group of scholars and practitioners who consider various aspects of men's development and college experiences. It was refreshing to see authors from a variety of institutional types, including Historically Black Colleges. The monograph emerged from the Reconnecting Males to Liberal Education symposium held at Morehouse College in 2001. Consistent with other New Directions for Student Services sourcebooks, notes from the editor precede the chapters in this issue. Kellom described the agenda and recommendations from the Morehouse symposium, including the need for stronger partnerships and additional scholarship pertaining to male collegians. He then offered a quick report of significant, but seemingly random trends and statistics regarding gender inequities that are unfavorable for college men. These data deserved fuller treatment and explication—this review would have been better situated in an actual chapter instead of the editor's notes. In the first chapter, Obie Clayton, Cynthia Lucas Hewitt, and Eddie Gaffney discussed the enrollment disparities that exist between men and women in higher education. They described how and why men of color (particularly African Americans) and male students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are underrepresented in comparison to their same-race female peers. The theories and sociocultural frameworks in which their consideration is grounded elucidate the undercurrents of low matriculation rates among racial/ethnic minority male students; this is a definite strength of the chapter. Although the issues articulated therein are indeed exacerbated for African American men, in many sections sole emphasis is placed on that population at the exclusion of others. Notwithstanding, the authors offered a useful set of implications for research and policy at the end of the chapter, along with this cautionary note: "Policies that might help male students at the expense of female [students] should be avoided" (p. 20). Rocco Capraro provided a masterful synthesis of historical and theoretical perspectives from the men's studies literature in chapter 2—the comprehensiveness of his review is both exemplary and noteworthy. He drew on seminal and contemporary works from major thinkers on masculinities and forged logical connections between male student development in higher education and widely accepted points of view from men's studies. Readers who lack prior exposure to literature on men and masculinities will find this chapter especially insightful. Chapter 3 is divided into two fragmented parts. In the first half, Cynthia Neal Spence posited that several lessons can be learned from women's colleges, particularly Spelman, regarding curriculum, pedagogy, and the creation of environments in which healthy, non-monolithic gender identities are developed. She situated this transferability primarily in the context of Morehouse...

TWO BRAINS ARE BETTER THAN ONE: ACTIVE AND COLLABORATIVE STRATEGIES ENHANCE STUDENT LEARNING

Active and collaborative (cooperative) learning are two pedagogical methods used in the instruction of students. In active learning students solve problems, formulate questions for discussions and brainstorm during class. Collaborative learning involves students working together as teams on projects, homework and testing. These pedagogies ensure student-directed learning, interdependence and individual accountability. These strategies were tested in two separate courses at Morehouse College (Gen Bio 112 and Bio Sci 101) in Spring 2005. To facilitate active and collaborative learning, students were paired up at the beginning of the semester and encouraged to work together in and out of class. The effectiveness of this method culminated with a paired test assessment at the end of the semester. Testing paradigm included students taking two individual and two paired exams. With a passing grade set at 70%, scores showed that 25% of the Bio 112 students passed the 3rd exam when it was taken individually (18/73), whereas 97% passed when the same test was given as paired testing (68/70). Student performance increased on the 4th individual exam to 62% (45/72) but declined slightly to 96% (52/54) on the paired testing. In the Bio 101 course, the passing grade was 60%. When taken individually, 74% passed (28/38) the 1st exam and 95% of the students passed the paired test (36/38). Students’ performance increased in the 4th individual exam to 91% (32/35) and the percentage from the paired testing increased slightly to 100% (27/27). These data show that active and collaborative strategies can be effective tools in enhancing student learning in different classes. Support contributed by the Div. of Sci. and Maths, Morehouse College.

Center for Behavioral Neuroscience: a prototype multi-institutional collaborative research center

The Center for Behavioral Neuroscience was launched in the fall of 1999 with support from the National Science Foundation, the Georgia Research Alliance, and our eight participating institutions (Georgia State University, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Morehouse School of Medicine, Clark-Atlanta University, Spelman College, Morehouse College, Morris Brown College). The CBN provides the resources to foster innovative research in behavioral neuroscience, with a specific focus on the neurobiology of social behavior. Center faculty working in collaboratories use diverse model systems from invertebrates to humans to investigate fear, aggression, affiliation, and reproductive behaviors. The addition of new research foci in reward and reinforcement, memory and cognition, and sex differences has expanded the potential for collaborations among Center investigators. Technology core laboratories develop the molecular, cellular, systems, behavioral, and imaging tools essential for investigating how the brain influences complex social behavior and, in turn, how social experience influences brain function.In addition to scientific discovery, a major goal of the CBN is to train the next generation of behavioral neuroscientists and to increase the number of women and under-represented minorities in neuroscience. Educational programs are offered for K-12 students to spark an interest in science. Undergraduate and graduate initiatives encourage students to participate in interdisciplinary and inter-institutional programs, while postdoctoral programs provide a bridge between laboratories and allow the interdisciplinary research and educational ventures to flourish. Finally, the CBN is committed to knowledge transfer, partnering with community organizations to bring neuroscience to the public. This multifaceted approach through research, education, and knowledge transfer will have a major impact on how we study interactions between the brain and behavior, as well as how the public views brain function and neuroscience.

Segregation Nostalgia and Black Authenticity

“The politics of conversion shuns the limelight—a limelight that solicits status seekers and ingratiates egomaniacs” (20). Thus spake Cornel West, one of the foremost African-American public intellectuals, who, a few seasons ago, reminiscent of Ann Hutchinson and Roger Williams, departed the stultifying environs of Massachusetts and embarked on a symbolic errand into the wilderness of Princeton, New Jersey. If there is a black intellectual tradition, the author of these words has identified one of its essential features. Authentic leadership is vernacular; it “stays on the ground among the toiling everyday people,” the unpretentious folk, “humble freedom fighters—both followers and leaders” (20). Let us not forget those prophetic leaders, engaged in colloquial discourses with “everyday people,” whom one encounters, no doubt, in peregrinations from Princeton to Harvard and back again. Organic intellectuals do, in all fairness, occasionally carry their evangelical revivals to such frontiers of civilization as Morehouse College or Wayne State University, although they seldom stay overnight. It would break their hearts to be relegated to hardship posts like Michigan’s Highland Park Community College or to the institution formerly known as Rhode Island Junior College (RIJC), which uncouth snobs pronounced “reject.” The rootsiness of public intellectuals is frequently observed in televised forums, where oversized panels nod vigorously in confirmation of one another’s sermons on the necessity of “giving back to the community.” In theory, the black intellectual tradition is valid only insofar as it arises organically from the folk. In order to be legitimate, it must be popular. If it is genuine, it must be grassroots. If it is authoritative, it must be vernacular; if justifiable, plebeian; if sound, democratic; if convincing, communal; if binding, proletarian; if valid, colloquial.

Developing Professionals of Color: Going Beyond the Traditional Leadership Skill Set

This article demonstrates how the Leadership and Professional Development course at Morehouse College, an all-male historically Black college in Atlanta, Georgia, goes beyond teaching traditional leadership and professional development skills and exposes students to the impact of being a “professional of color” in corporate America. This paper will explore the need for African Americans to have skills related to corporate success that go beyond those needed by Whites and the pedagogical techniques used to develop the additional skill sets in undergraduate students of color. Anecdotal and empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of the course is provided.

New Day Begun: African American Churches and Civic Culture in Post-Civil Rights America. Ed. by R. Drew Smith. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. x, 310 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0- 8223-3131-4.)

This book represents the fruits of a research program at Morehouse College in Atlanta known as the Public Influences of African American Churches Project. In the first of two projected volumes, the project seeks to look carefully at the connections between the black church and American politics since the 1960s. It also seeks to nourish scholarship among both younger and more mature scholars on an important topic that is still largely unexplored in the field of African American studies. This first volume focuses on the African American churches and national “civic culture” in the United States in the designated time period, a culture defined as “the social skills and trust that are necessary for democratic processes and democratic governance” (p. 40). The approach to the subject is interdisciplinary in nature, chiefly through the use of theoretical and quantified data and the techniques of political scientists, with a strong dash of historical analysis and even an essay contributed by a theologian. The book begins with a historical overview by Vanderbilt church historian Lewis Baldwin that traces the role of black churches in the African American community from Reconstruction to the present. Baldwin suggests that the church has actually vacillated between a pietistic other worldliness and a deep involvement in social activism in the 140 years since the end of the Civil War and that these two strains in black church life continue to manifest themselves in the post-1960 period. Baldwin feels that in general, after a burst of social involvement because of the freedom movement, in recent years the black church has become more conservative and tradition-oriented and is moving away from a prophetic political and social activism.