Noted African-American educator is Montgomery Fellow

Posted 04/30/98

Johnnetta Cole, an anthropologist and Spelman College's first African-American woman president, will deliver a speech titled "Lines That Divide and Friendships That Bind" on Wednesday, May 6 at 4 p.m. in 105 Dartmouth Hall. She is on campus May 1-30 as a Montgomery Fellow.

During her decades of acclaimed work as a scholar, professor, author and administrator, Cole has been an advocate for people of color and women throughout the world. Admitted to college at age 15, she holds a doctorate in anthropology from Northwestern University and has served on the faculties of Hunter College, City University of New York, the University of Massachusetts (where she also served as associate provost of undergraduate education) and Washington State University.

In 1988, Cole was appointed president of Spelman College, which at 117 years of age is the nation's oldest private liberal arts college for black women. She left the position last June.

During Cole's tenure at Spelman, the college initiated several new programs including the Spelman Corporate Women's Roundtable; the Spelman College Corporate Partnership Program; a mentorship program in coordination with the Atlanta business community; an international affairs center, faculty exchanges with major research institutions; and a program for increased student volunteer community outreach into the community. This period also saw the college attract increasing numbers of outstanding students and receive high ratings as a "best college buy" from U.S. News & World Report and Money magazine.

In 1992, Cole was appointed as a member of President-Elect Bill Clinton's Transition Team. She has served on the directing bodies of a range of international, national and regional entities and corporations, including the National Committee on Higher Education and the Health of Youth, which she co-chaired; the Rockefeller Foundation; Wellesley College; the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change; the Project Interchange Seminars in Israel; Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa; the National Political Congress of Black Women; the National Council of Negro Women; Merck & Co.; NationsBank South; and Coca-Cola Enterprises.

Broadly published, two of her books, All American Women: Lines that Divide, Ties That Bind (1986) and Anthropology for the Eighties (1982) are used in college classrooms across the country. Her newest book, Anthropology for the Nineties, was published in 1988.

In addition to the May 6 speech, Cole's Dartmouth stay will include meetings with groups of students and faculty; visits to such college classes as "Black Womanhood in Culture and Society" and "Contemporary Issues in American Education"; and a speech at the annual meeting of the Institute for Lifelong Education at Dartmouth.

Initiated and funded by the late Kenneth F. Montgomery and his wife, Harle, the Montgomery Endowment brings outstanding figures in the academic as well as the non-academic world to Dartmouth where they can interact with students. Montgomery fellows spend between a few days and a few months in Hanover, while they deliver lectures, teach classes and often continue their own research.