UNIVERSITY NEWS the founders started Atlanta University and Clark College, “theyWhen were starting an educational institution under siege. They were starting…when they knew we needed education. This ‘mobilizing’ theme is galvanizing, and it is important to embrace it now because black folks today are under siege.
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Julianne Malveaux, Ph.D., Delivers Founders Day Speech Julianne Malveaux, Ph.D., founder and president of Economic Education, the Washington, D.C.-based, 501(c)3 illuminating connections between personal finance and economic policy, and author of Are We Better Off: Race, Obama and Public Policy (Oct. 2015), was the keynote speaker at the annual Founders Day Convocation on March 17. Malveaux, a native San Franciscan, earned the bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Boston College and in 1980 earned the Ph.D. in economics from MIT. She is a nationally sought-after speaker, writer and public intellectual.
Her perspectives on issues — race, gender and their economic impact, in particular — continue to shape public opinion nationwide. In her service as the 15th president of Bennett College, the nation’s oldest historically black college for women, Malveaux transformed the institution by focusing on leadership, entrepreneurship, excellence in communications and global awareness. During her five-year tenure, the college secured its 10-year reaffirmation of accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools; significantly improved facilities;
and embarked on a $21 million capital improvements program, its first in more than 25 years. Previously, Malveaux was a member of the faculty or a visiting faculty member at some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions: the New School for Social Research, San Francisco State University, the University of California (Berkeley), Michigan State University and Howard University. She is the recipient of four honorary degrees and presently serves on the boards of the Economic Policy Institute and the United Medical Center of Washington, D.C.
Alum Horace Henry’s Photographs to Become Part of Collection at the National Museum of African American History and Culture One serendipitous day in January 1969, Horace Henry, a junior at Clark College who had just pledged Alpha Phi Alpha, joined his new brothers at Ebenezer Baptist Church to attend a memorial celebration to honor the birthday of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who’d been assassinated nine months earlier. On a whim, Hamilton grabbed a new camera he’d recently been gifted and wasn’t entirely certain how to use, and a couple of rolls of film. While standing at the back of the sanctuary, with his camera in hand, Henry suddenly found himself being led by an usher to the front of the church, where professional photographers and journalists from local, national and worldwide 2
CLARK ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
SPRING 2016
media outlets, such as the Associated Press, the Atlanta Journal & Constitution, and others had gathered. To say that he was surprised would be an understatement. After all, he did not look like a professional member of the Fourth Estate, nor did he have press credentials to cover the historic event. But, instead of balking at an opportunity that likely changed the course of his life, Henry began shooting, praying all the while that he was getting some good images. The result was an epic collection of photographs titled “One Day In January,” which will be housed in the new National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. And while most
people would attribute this coup to Henry’s extraordinary talent, according to the author and photographer, “it is nothing short of divine intervention.”