SPRING 2015 SPELMAN Messenger
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THE ALUMNAE MAGAZINE OF SPELMAN COLLEGE VOLUME 125 NUMBER 1 SPRING 2015 SPELMAN Messenger EDITOR All submissions should be sent to: Jo Moore Stewart Spelman Messenger Office of Alumnae Affairs COPY EDITOR 350 Spelman Lane, S.W., Box 304 Janet M. Barstow Atlanta, GA 30314 GRAPHIC DESIGNERS OR Alex Bundrick [email protected] Garon Hart Submission Deadlines: ALUMNAE DATA MANAGER Fall Issue: Submissions January 1 – May 31 Alyson Shumpert Dorsey, C’2002 Spring Issue: Submissions June 1 – December 31 ALUMNAE NOTES EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE Eloise A. Alexis, C’86 Alumnae Notes is dedicated to the following: Joyce Davis • Education Tomika DePriest, C’89 • Personal (birth of a child or marriage) Kassandra Kimbriel Jolley • Professional Renita Mathis Please include the date of the event in your Sharon E. Owens, C’76 submission. TAKE NOTE! WRITERS Adrienne Harris Take Note! is dedicated to the following alumnae Lorraine Robertson achievements: Angela Brown Terrell • Published • Appearing in films, television or on stage PHOTOGRAPHERS • Special awards, recognition and appointments Flip Chalfant Please include the date of the event in your J.D. Scott submission. Spelman Archives Julie Yarbrough, C’91 BOOK NOTES Book Notes is dedicated to alumnae authors. Please submit review copies. The Spelman Messenger is published twice a year IN MEMORIAM by Spelman College, 350 Spelman Lane, S.W., We honor our Spelman sisters. If you receive Atlanta, Georgia 30314-4399, free of charge notice of the death of a Spelman sister, please for alumnae, donors, trustees and friends of contact the Office of Alumnae Affairs at the College. Recipients wishing to change the 404-270-5048 or Sharon Owens, director of address to which the Spelman Messenger is sent alumnae affairs, at [email protected]. should notify the editor, giving both old and new For verification purposes, please include a printed addresses. Third-class postage paid at Atlanta, program, newspaper acknowledgment or electronic Georgia. Publication No. 510240 link with your submission. CREDO The Spelman Messenger, founded in 1885, is dedicated to participating in the ongoing education of our readers through enlightening articles designed to promote lifelong learning. The Spelman Messenger is the alumnae magazine of Spelman College and is committed to educating, serving and empowering Black women. SPELMAN VOLUME 125, NUMBER 1 Messenger SPRING 2015 ON THE COVER Spelman President Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D. CHALFANT FLIP PHOTO: 2 Voices Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D. Contents Points of Pride 12 Conversations 20 Scholar 22 Administrator 24 Change Agent FEATURE 10 Nothing Less Than Her Best President Beverly Daniel Tatum Leaves Spelman with a Legacy of Excellence as a Scholar, Administrator and Change Agent B Y A DRIENNE S. H ARIR S 2 Books & Papers 8 Book Notes 26 Alumnae Notes 35 In Memoriam WORDS BY I invite all of you here that love Spelman College to join me in making our love visible – collectively working to ensure that the Spelman of the 21st century provides ‘nothing less than the best’ for the next generation of Spelman women. Voices The theme of our inaugural events has been In Search of Social Justice: Liberal Education for the 21st Century. That seems like such a fitting theme, not only because of my own work as a social justice educator, but because Spelman College has been from its beginning grounded in a vision of social justice. 2 SPELMAN MESSENGER Academic Excellence Leadership Development Improving our Environment Visibility of our Achievements Exemplary Customer Service A – L – I - V – E spells ALIVE Spelman ALIVE – strong, vital, and productive well into the 21st century – that is our goal. There is a verse from Proverbs (9:1-2) that someone paraphrased and illustrated for me that hangs in my home office in Reynolds Cottage. It says ‘Wisdom has built herself a house and set herself a table.’ And I think of it when I think about Spelman. Beginning with the founders, Sophia Packard and Harriet Giles, and the indispensable Father Frank Quarles, there have been generations of wise women and men that have devoted their time and energy here to build this house of learning, and set a table of academic opportunity for generations of students. 2011 Convocation Speech: Project 2015 SPRING 2015 3 Certainly the election of 2008 changed a fundamental narrative in American culture. Today the story has a new ending. We can no longer predict the winner based on race (and perhaps, soon, not even on gender.) The election of 2008 and the victory of Barack Obama mean that anyone with talent, drive and a great game plan can win. That new possibility makes for a much better story and a much better society. Birthing Pains and the Emergence of a New Social Narrative November 13, 2008 The march through the Alumnae Arch reminds me that no alumna returns to an institution exactly like the one she left. To paraphrase the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, we can never step in the same river twice. Spelman, like a river, is always changing, changed by our presence in it, and by what has happened after we depart, and we ourselves are always changing, never exactly the same as we were when we first stepped in. And that is as it should be, because every healthy organism must grow to maintain its health.When growth ceases, decline begins. Yet even as change is constant, what the March through the Arch also makes visible each May is the enduring tradition of excellence embodied in the lives of Spelman graduates, and the everlasting love of Spelman College in the hearts of the daughters who return home once more. Truly that is something to celebrate! 4 SPELMAN MESSENGER “Anyone who has the drive and the discipline to achieve world-class excellence is likely to have what it takes to be successful at Spelman College.” And that is what you all have in common with Gabby Douglas, the capacity to perform with excellence – to achieve our personal and collective best – to “go for the gold!” And it is exciting to look back and see how together we have improved in many ways over the last ten years! But as good as we are, individually and collectively, we can always be better – and that’s what going for the gold is all about. Continually striving for world-class excellence! Truly we are caught in a “web of mutuality,” and that means we must look to include, rather than exclude; we must expand opportunity for all, not limit it; we must recognize talent in all communities including low income communities of color, not overlook it; we must set the example, knowing that others will follow. John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation Symposium on the Politics of Reconciliation, June 1, 2012, Tulsa, Oklahoma SPRING 2015 5 ready for a true, multicultural book’s appendix, she encour- Book Reviews society? Or has the presence of ages the continuation of cross- racism, and the fear it raises, cultural dialogue, and offers a caused us to foolishly hide our plan to follow that includes a heads in the sand? reader’s discussion guide and a Scholar, psychologist, diver- reading list suitable for all age sity specialist and now retiring groups from young children president of Spelman College, through adults. This book is Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum has definitely one to be read by updated her groundbreaking anyone hoping to be around 1999 book on how to have to make positive change in this open discussions about race 21st century. and racial issues in our class- (P.S. If you can answer the rooms and homes. question in the book’s title, When Black and White proceed to the head of the class!) people get together to talk about racial situations, are Why Are All the Black they talking on the same level? Kids Sitting Together Do Black people too often perceive an attitude of pater- in the Cafeteria? – And nalism from White people Other Conversations or feel we have to play the About Race role of a victim? The author Papers by Beverly Daniel Tatum, writes, “In order for there to Ph.D (Basic Books) be meaningful dialogue, fear, whether of anger or isolation, EDITOR’S NOTE: This review must eventually give way to appeared in the winter-spring 2003 risk and trust. A leap of faith presidential inaugural issue of the & must be made. It is not easy, Spelman Messenger. It is being Can We Talk about Race? repeated at the retiring of President and it requires being willing to Tatum, because, 11 years later, the push past one’s fear.” And Other Conversations message of this book is still relevant. Think about it. The price in an Era of School we pay for unresolved racial Resegregation It always amused me and my issues, for example, is seen in by Beverly Daniel Tatum, colleagues at my former job, today’s ongoing debates about Ph.D. (Beacon Press) that as soon as three of us the continuation of affirma- Black folk got into a conversa- tive action in universities and When this book was published tion, invariably, a White co- employment. in 2007, it provided one of worker would wander over to Dr. Tatum emphasizes that the first open discussions of see what we were discussing, this dialogue goes “Beyond the decline of cross-racial rela- or so it seemed. It happened Black and White.” Our coun- tionships in education since so often, we joked and made try includes a rapidly growing the landmark 1954 Brown v. bets about how long it would population of Latino and Asian Board of Education Supreme take for someone to see if we people, who also face the same Court case that was the begin- were “plotting a revolution.” dilemma of preserving their ning of desegregation of the So it is not surprising to racial or cultural identity vs.