THE BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY:: BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : AFRICAN AMERICAN " JOHNNETTA BETSCH COLE " IS AN AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, EDUCATOR AND MUSEUM DIRECTOR, SHE WAS THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN FEMALE PRESIDENT OF SPELMAN COLLEGE : GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK HEROES "

Wednesday, 3 September 2014

BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : AFRICAN AMERICAN " JOHNNETTA BETSCH COLE " IS AN AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, EDUCATOR AND MUSEUM DIRECTOR, SHE WAS THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN FEMALE PRESIDENT OF SPELMAN COLLEGE : GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK HEROES "

BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Johnnetta Betsch Cole (born October 19, 1936)^[1] is an American anthropologist, educator and museum director. Cole was the first African-American female president of Spelman College, a historically black college.

Background

Johnnetta Betsch was born in Florida in 1936. She is a granddaughter of Florida's first black millionaire Abraham Lincoln Lewis and Mary Kingsley Sammis. Sammis' great-grandparents were Zephaniah Kingsley, a slave trader and slave owner, and his wife and former slave Anna Madgigine Jai, originally from present-day Senegal. Her Fort George Island home is protected as Kingsley Plantation, a National Historic Landmark.^[4]

Cole enrolled at age 15 in Fisk University, a historically black college. She transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio, where she completed a B.A. in anthropology in 1957. She did field research in Liberia, West Africa in 1960-61. She attended graduate school at Northwestern University, earning her masters (1959) and Ph.D. (1967) in anthropology.

Teaching

Cole taught briefly at UCLA (1964) and directed the Black Studies program at Washington State University at Pullman (1969–70). She started in 1970 in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, were she served until 1983. She also was provost of undergraduate education from 1981 to 1983. While at the University of Massachusetts, she played a pivotal role in the development of the university's W.E.B. Du Bois Department of African-American Studies.

In 1983, Cole joined the faculty of Hunter College, where she directed the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program. Beginning in 1997, Cole also taught in the Anthropology department of Emory University, where she is now Presidential Distinguished Professor Emerita.

Administration

In 1987, Cole was selected as the first black female president of Spelman College, a prestigious historically black college for women. She served until 1997, building up their endowment through a $113 million capital campaign, attracting significantly higher enrollment as students increased, and overall raising the ranking of the school among the best liberal arts schools went up. Bill and Camille Cosby contributed $20 million to the capital campaign.^[5]

After teaching at Emory University, she was recruited as president of Bennett College for Women, also a historically black college for women. There she led another successful capital campaign. In addition, she founded an art gallery to contribute to the college's culture.^[5] Cole is currently the Chair of the The Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity & Inclusion Institute founded at Bennett College for Women. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

In 2009 Cole was named as Director of the National Museum of African Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.^[5]

Service

Cole has also served in major corporations; she was been a director of Merck & Co. since 1994. She is the first woman elected to the board of Coca Cola.^[6] From 2004 to 2006, Cole was the Chair of the Board of Trustees of United Way of America^[7] and is on the Board of Directors of the United Way of Greater Greensboro.^[8] in the year of 2002.