Although Dr. Ronald Walters died in 2010, his life as a civil rights activist and prolific scholar continues to be the subject of discourse and analysis.
This week, colleagues and friends who knew Walters discussed his legacy in connection with the recent publication of Ronald W. Walters and the Fight for Black Power, 1969-2010 by Dr. Robert C. Smith.
Several events hosted by Howard University and the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) focused attention on Smith’s “political biography” of the man who advised and supported Black leaders while becoming one of the nation’s leading Black studies academicians. The book traces the Black political movement through Walters’ life in that struggle.
Although he is often associated with Howard because of his tenure there from 1971 to 1996 as a professor in the political science department and chair for nine of those years, Walters later served as director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland for 13 years. He also taught at Syracuse University, Princeton, Brandeis and was a fellow in the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
But academia was just a slice of Walters’ robust life. A forum held last Tuesday focused on his work as a strategist, activist and guiding force supporting political figures and civil rights leaders.
Speakers included Smith, the author and professor of political science at San Francisco State University; former Democratic Party chair and Georgetown University adjunct professor Donna Brazile; Sirius XM radio host Joe Madison; Morgan State University professor Dr. Raymond Winbush and NNPA publisher Dr. Benjamin Chavis.
Explaining that he wrote the book because Walters’ legacy “needed to be preserved,” Smith pointed out that, despite all of Walters’ activities, “The last decade of his life was devoted to reparations.”
