When Dr. Richard D. Benson II talks about education, he quotes Malcolm X, saying “Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.”
Benson, 37, is currently an assistant professor and associate chair of the education studies program at Spelman College in Atlanta. He said it was his mother’s influence that has made such a large impact on his career.
“My mother’s thing was school. … It was not uncommon for an individual to take 3 to 4 years off to work and save for college with the intent to enroll at a later time and that is what my mother did.”
It is this perseverance towards education that set a remarkable example and a proven attainable goal of higher education for her son. Benson also credits his grandparents Rose and Carl Carpenter, Dr. Anderson Thompson, Dr. Conrad Worrill, Bob Brown and Sammie Eames as career mentors.
In school, Benson was not a straight “A” student, but he excelled in courses that were geared towards reading comprehension and analysis. He recalls early on having a passion for books on civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. When it was time to choose a college major, Benson said sociology was a natural fit for him.
“I was able to relate sociology to the ways of life,” he said. He later decided to add a second major, political science.
A native of Chicago, he earned a dual bachelor’s degree in sociology and political science from Saint Xavier University, a master’s in inner city education studies from Northeastern Illinois University and a M.Ed. in instructional leadership, educational studies from the University of Illinois-Chicago. In 2010, he successfully completed the pursuit of his Ph.D. in educational policy studies, specializing in the history of education from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
