SPELLMAN ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS

The Spellman Awards program was created 36 years ago to recognize and acknowledge the academic achievements of our students of African, Asian, Latino and Native American heritage.

The program’s purpose was later expanded to include recognition of outstanding student leadership and community service. In 1991, both the program and the awards presented were named in honor and memory of one of the University’s most highly regarded colleagues, the late Dr. Seth Spellman, Jr.

The first African American dean was Dr. Seth Spellman, Jr. He served as the first and only dean of the James E. Allen Jr. Collegiate Center, 1972-76, a program that combined senior year of high school and freshman year of college, allowing a B.A. to be earned in three years. The program closed in 1976. Spellman would later serve as Acting Dean, 1976-77, then Dean of the School of Social Welfare, 19771980. Spellman, a professor of Social Welfare, would once again chair the Department of African and Afro-American Studies in 1983-84. He was elevated to the rank of Distinguished Service Professor in 1984 and retired as Professor Emeritus in 1985.

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Black Solidarity Day

Black Solidarity Day is a Memorial Day, created in 1969 by Panamanian-born activist, historian, playwright, Carlos Enrique Russell, Ph.D. It occurs in early November on the Monday before elections take place. Originally, the event brought black people together to discuss their political status and the direction in which their future was going. The day also focused on the value and goals of education within the community. It was, and still is, a day of discussion and a time for everyone, no matter of what race or education, to discuss how we all affect each other’s lives.

Black Lives Matter

#BlackLivesMatter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.

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Defining Diaspora

The trans-Atlantic slave trade was the capture, forcible transport, and sale of native Africans to Europeans for lifelong bondage in the Americas. Lasting from the 16th to 19th centuries, it is responsible, more than any other project or phenomenon in the history of the modern world, for the creation of the African diaspora the dispersal of Black people outside their places of origin on the continent of Africa.

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Definition: DI-AS-PO-RA / n. a dispersion of a people, language, or culture that was formerly concentrated in one place, to scatter, to displace, to live in separated communities.

Definition: AFRICAN & BLACK DIASPORA The African Diaspora is the voluntary and involuntary movement of Africans and their descendants to various parts of the world during the modern and pre-modern periods.

Sites to visit:

• Museum of the African Diaspora - https://www.moadsf.org/

• How Native American Slaveholders Complicated the Trail of Tears Narrativehttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-native-americanslaveholders-complicate-trail-tears-narrative-180968339/

• The Lumbee community represents the intersectionality of people from African and indigenous America. - https://www.lumbeetribe.com/history-and-culture

• Afro-Latinx Bibliography - https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-studies/afro-latinx-bibliography