Boston University School of Social Work Celebrates Black History Month

The Boston University School of Social Work (BUSSW) is pleased to celebrate Black History Month by highlighting influential black social workers. We applaud Quiana Scott-Ferguson, senior staff coordinator at BUSSW, for researching several prominent social workers in history.

Prominent Black Social Workers

Hubert “Hubie” Jones

Professor Hubert “Hubie” Jones is dean emeritus of the Boston University School of Social Work, where he served as professor and dean from 1977 to 1993, the first African American in that role.

Just a few years after Professor Jones completed his master’s in social work at BU (SSW’57), he found himself thrust in the thick of Boston’s civil rights movement. He was inspired to action by leaders like Clark, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59), whom he had heard speak in Boston in 1956. Professor Jones has played a key role in the formation, rebuilding and leadership of at least 30 community organizations within the black community and across the city. In 20 of these organizations, he served as chairman of the board or executive director. Some of these leadership roles include: executive director of the Roxbury Multi-Service Center, board chairman of the Massachusetts Advocacy Center; board president of Roxbury Youthworks, Roxbury Community College Foundation and the Citywide Educational Coalition.

Since 2002, he has been founder and president of the Boston Children’s Chorus. He has served as a trustee at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute for 10 years and a trustee of the Foley Hoag Foundation for 25 years.

Sources
http://www.encore.org/hubert-ejones
https://www.bu.edu/ssw/bostonia/web/hubie/

Wilma Peebles-Wilkins

Dr. Wilma Peebles-Wilkins, the former associate dean for academic affairs, was dean of the Boston University School of Social Work for twelve years. Prior to moving to Boston, she was the director of the social work program, associate head of the department of sociology, anthropology, and social Work, and associate professor at North Carolina State University. She graduated from North Carolina State University in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in social work. She earned her MSSA from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio and her doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Peebles-Wilkins was one of the early gubernatorial appointees to the North Carolina Social Work Certification and Licensure Board and has been active with NASW in various capacities— she has been a member of the board of directors, the Commission on Accreditation of the Council on Social Work Education, the National Association of Deans and Directors of Schools of Social Work, as well as chair of the New England Deans and Directors of Schools of Social Work. She was inducted into the National Academies of Practice as a Distinguished Practitioner, and was named as a Social Work Pioneer by the National Association of Social Workers. She served on the editorial board of the journal Children and Schools for six years; as editor-in-chief for three of those years. Additionally, she was a state delegate and member of the first Examination Committee of the Association of State Boards of Social Work.

Sources
http://www.naswfoundation.org/pioneers/p/WilmaPeebles-Wilkins.htm

June Gary Hopps

Dean June Gary Hopps has led the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work for 23 years. After graduating from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, Dean Hopps became active in the Civil Rights Movement. She completed her master’s degree in social work from Clark-Atlanta University School of Social Work and received her doctorate from the Florence Heller School for Advance Studies in social welfare at Brandies University. Prior to her work at Boston College, she chaired the research sequence at Ohio State University. She has consistently been a leader in national efforts to build a research base for the profession.

Dean Hopps served as the editor and chief of Social Work, the flagship journal of the profession, and the co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Social Work. She is the author of five books and over 40 scholarly articles.

Dean Hopps served on the board of many local agencies and currently chairs the Board of Trustees of Spelman College. She has been active in the Council on Social Work Education and the National Association of Social Workers. Dean Hopps has received numerous awards for leadership in the profession.

Sources
http://www.modelfamilies.org/htmldocs/hopps.htm

Ronald Vernie “Ron” Dellums

Ronald Vernie “Ron” Dellums (born November 24, 1935 in Oakland, California) served as Oakland’s forty-fifth (and third black) mayor. From 1971-1998, he was elected to 13 terms as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Northern California’s 9th Congressional District, after which he worked as a lobbyist in Washington D.C. Dellums served in the United States Marine Corps from 1954 to 1956. He later received his associate’s degree from Oakland City College in 1958, his BA from San Francisco State University in 1960, and his master’s degree in social work from the University of California, Berkeley in 1962. He became a psychiatric social worker and political activist in the black community beginning in the 1960s. He also taught at the San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Dellums

Sara A. Collins Fernandis (1863-1951)

Sara Fernandis, a contemporary of Jane Addams, founded the first Black Social Settlement House in the United States in Washington, D.C. She received her MSW degree from New York University and became a role model for all black women in social work.
Throughout her career, she was active in Baltimore helping to improve the conditions of black men and women. She was one of the organizers of the Interracial, Interfaith Association. She was also instrumental in the organizing of Henryton State Hospital as a sanitorium for black tuberculosis patients. She has been included in the publication “Pioneers in Professionalism: Those Who Made a Significant Difference 1880-1930”. She had a life-long career of organizing social welfare and public health activities in the segregated black communities of the period. She organized the Women’s Cooperative Civic League in Baltimore that worked to improve sanitation and health conditions in black neighborhoods. Fernandis became the first black social worker employed by the Baltimore Health Department in the early 1900s. She lived to see her goal of “establishing the public purpose” begin to be achieved.

Sources
http://www.naswfoundation.org/pioneers/f/fernandis.htm

Edward Franklin Frazier

Edward Frazier earned his bachelor’s degree cum laude at Howard University in 1916. Frazier then taught in secondary schools in Alabama, Virginia and Maryland. In 1919, he began graduate studies at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., receiving a master’s degree in sociology. Frazier became a sociology instructor at Morehouse College and a director of the Atlanta School of Social Work.

Frazier’s 1927 essay “The Pathology of Race Prejudice” in Forum drew an analogy between race prejudice and insanity. As a result, Frazier had to leave Atlanta to avoid a white lynch mob. From 1927 to 1929 he pursued advanced study at the University of Chicago and received his doctorate in sociology for The Negro Family in Chicago. Frazier returned to Howard University in 1934 as head of the Department of Sociology. In 1959, he became professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology and the African Studies program. Frazier published eight books, 18 chapters in books, and at least 89 articles, and offered pioneering interpretations of the character, history, and influence of the black family.

Sources
http://www.answers.com/topic/e-franklin-frazier

Dr. Douglas G. Glasgow

Dr. Douglas Glasglow is dean emeritus of Howard University’s School of Social Work, serving from 1972 to 1975. While there, he led faculty and students in creating the first comprehensive accredited graduate level curriculum modeled from a black perspective. He was also a professor of social policy and research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and at Howard University. He helped found and later co-chaired The Center for Study of Afro-American History and Culture at the University of California in Los Angeles. He also served as visiting professor at the University of Ghana at Legon and Makererre University in Uganda. During his time in Africa, Glasgow served as a policy analyst and consultant on social development to the ministers of social welfare in Ghana and with the Ministry of Rehabilitation in Ethiopia. In 1978, he traveled extensively in the People’s Republic of China to study the systems of education, juvenile care, and health services, paying special attention to the processes of social rehabilitation and re-motivation.

Glasgow received his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College, a master’s in social work from Columbia University and a doctorate in social work research from the University of Southern California. He has helped found such community-based and national organizations as the Black Men’s Development Center, the National Association of Black Social Workers and the United Black Fund/United Way. In Washington D.C., he served on various boards and commissions including the District of Columbia’s Mental Health Reorganization Commission, the Advisory Board on Mental Health, and the Teen Pregnancy Commission.

Sources
http://www.naswfoundation.org/pioneers/g/glasgow.html

Whitney Young (1921-1971)

Whitney Young spent most of his career working to end employment discrimination in the United States while also turning the National Urban League from a passive civil rights organization into one that aggressively fought for equitable access to socioeconomic opportunity for the historically disenfranchised. Young earned a bachelor of science degree from Kentucky State University. After the World War II, Young joined his wife, Margaret, at the University of Minnesota, where he earned a master’s degree in social work in 1947. There, he volunteered for the St. Paul branch of the National Urban League. He was then appointed to a leadership position in that branch.

Whitney Young’s legacy, as President Nixon stated in his eulogy, was that “he knew how to accomplish what other people were merely for.” Young’s work was instrumental in breaking down the barriers of segregation and inequality that held back African Americans.

Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitney_Young

Anita Rose Williams (1891-1983)

Anita Williams was the first black Catholic social worker in the United States . She was also the first black supervisor employed by an agency in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was born. She had no formal education beyond high school, although she attended sociology lectures at Johns Hopkins University.
During the early 1900s, she did volunteer work in family and child welfare agencies. In 1921, she restructured the city’s four black parishes as the Bernard Atkins Organization, which promoted the economic and social assistance of Catholic youth. In 1923, after a year of employment with the Vincent de Paul Society, she began working for the Bureau of Catholic Charities of Baltimore. With the help of four other social workers, she organized District Eleven of the Baltimore Emergency Relief Commission. Before returning to Catholic Charities in 1936, she worked as a supervisor for the commission for three years. She retired from Catholic Charities in 1958. Williams also served on a number of health, welfare, and human relations boards. A building at the Barrett School for Girls in Glen Burnie, Maryland was named in her honor.

Sources
http://www.naswfoundation.org/pioneers/w/williams_a.html