Mosnar Communications, Inc. Public Relations Blog: Russell Simmons to Lead Celebrity Bloggers Named Editor-in-Chief of Global Grind.

African-American Studies Expert Dies

Gloria Harper Dickinson, an African-American professor who was the president of the Association for the study of African American Life and History and international regional director of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, has died. She was 61. The chairwoman of African American studies at the College of New Jersey, Dickinson specialty was the African Diaspora. In 1978, she was named a professor of African American studies at Trenton State College, now the College of New Jersey in Ewing, where she taught until she became ill in the fall, Philly.com reports. She died last Sunday of breast cancer at her home in the Philadelphia suburb of Willingboro, N.J.  The only child of a Merchant Marine and a nurse, Dickinson was raised in Queens, N.Y.; she graduated from Hunter High School in New York. She earned a bachelor’s degree in European history from City College of New York in 1968, and a master’s in 1970 and a doctorate in 1978, both in African American studies, from Howard University. She was an early proponent of media technology in African studies, according to Philly.com. “Gloria introduced a computer in her classroom in 1988,” her husband said. At the time of her death, she was Webmaster for the Association of Black Women Historians. “I’ve always tried to connect with communities of people from African heritage,” Dickinson said before leaving for a trip to France in 2001 to lecture at the U.S. Embassy in Paris and the U.S. Consulate in Strasbourg. Six years earlier, she was among representatives from every continent at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. She spoke on African women’s topics, including equal rights, wages, domestic and political violence, and female circumcision. Kim Pearson, a professor of English at the College of New Jersey, described her friend as “a connoisseur of culture.” She had the “Rolodex from God. She traveled the world and connected people with people,” Pearson said.

African-American Studies Expert Dies | News You Should Know | BET.com.

NEWSWEEK asked descendants of key figures in civil rights history to write letters to their ancestors describing their thoughts and feelings about the historic inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. And to add to the record, we’ve collected letters from students and notable figures to Obama, and discussed the power of words with will.i.am and the inaugural poet.

Newsweek Video | Beyond Words: Two Heirs to Two Great Americans.

National Park Service

The National Mall was once the site of a slave market like this one in the 1840s in Washington.

A Civil Rights Victory Party on the Mall – NYTimes.com.