CONNECT . MOTIVATE . INSPIRE .
DR. JOHNNETTA COLE HUMANITIES MEDAL AWARDEE “STILL HAS WORK TO DO” BY DR. CRYSTAL A deGREGORY
A sk almost any graduate of historically Black colleges and universities, and they’ll likely know her name. At 86, Johnnetta Betsch Cole is unquestionably among the most beloved figures, not just in HBCU culture but in Black America and beyond. And for good reasons too. The resume of the anthropologist, educator, museum director, and two-time HBCU college president reads like a veritable “who’s who” and “what’s hot” for well over the last half-century. This March, United States President Joe Biden awarded Cole the 2021 National Humanities Medal in a ceremony that the COVID-19 pandemic had long delayed.
First awarded in 1997, the annual award succeeded the Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities, established in 1988. Today, the award is bestowed on no more than twelve persons annually, recognizing “individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities and broadened our citizens’ engagement with history, literature, languages, philosophy, and other humanities,” according to The White House. As America’s “Sister President,” Cole was hailed “for being a celebrated leader of sanctuaries of higher learning and culture. A scholar, anthropologist, and academic pace-setter, Johnnetta Betsch Cole’s pioneering work about the ongoing contributions of
Afro-Latin, Caribbean, and African communities have advanced American understanding of Black culture and the necessity and power of racial inclusion in our Nation,” her White House Citation declared. Born October 19, 1936, her extraordinary life began in Jacksonville, Florida; Cole’s connections to HBCUs are lifelong. Cole’s great-grandfather of Abraham Lincoln Lewis, founder of the Afro- American Life Insurance Company and Florida’s first African American millionaire, formerly served as a board member at the local Edward Waters College, now University. And her mother worked there as an English professor and registrar.
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