JONNETTA BETSCH COLE

Cole (1936- ) was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and received her Ph.D. in anthropology at Northwestern University in 1967. She taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for thirteen years, then went to Hunter College before being tapped in 1987 as the seventh president (and first woman president) of Spelman College, the oldest college for African American women in the U.S. She has an explicitly black feminist vision, and her research focuses on areas of cultural anthropology, African American studies, and women's studies.

Reference
Hine, Darlene Clark, ed. Black women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, Inc., 1993.

WILLIAM ALLISON DAVIS

Davis (1902-1983) was born in Washington, D.C. After receiving a Masters Degree in Anthropology (and one in comparative literature) from Harvard University in 1942, he taught at Dillard University and then at the University of Chicago until his death. He received a Ph.D. in Education in 1942 at the University of Chicago and was awarded the John Dewey Distinguished Professor honor. In 1948, he became one of the first African Americans to receive tenure at a non-historically Black institution. His work in psychology and education included appreciating the influence of social and economic factors in the education of poor children, which led to his charge that intelligence testing for children was culturally biased and his development of the Davis-Ellis Intelligence Test. His studies on social and class influences on the education of children attacked the assumption that children from low-income families were inferior in intelligence to their upper-income counterparts. During the Johnson and Nixon administrations Davis served as a member of the President's Commission on Civil Rights, an in 1967 he became the first scholar from the field of education to be designated a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The University of Chicago named Davis the university's John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of Education in 1970. Davis published books on children's education, cultural deprivation, and his last study, Leadership, Love and Aggression was a psychological study of four black leaders: Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Richard Wright and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.