In 2019, the higher education world lost some of its influencers, leaders and luminaries, from Pulitzer Prize winners to doctors and lawmakers. Their work lives on, and the academic community continues to honor their memory.
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison, an author and educator, earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Howard University and a master’s degree in English at Cornell University. Before her career took off as a world-renowned author, Morrison worked as an editor at Random House for nearly two decades. She was the fiction department’s first Black woman senior editor and opened doors for emerging Black writers such as Angela Davis and Gayl Jones. Morrison ultimately wrote 11 novels. Her bestselling book, Beloved, won an American Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988.
Joan Carol Morgan Matthews
Joan Carol Morgan Matthews had a storied career as a reporter and editor. She attended Tuskegee University, earning a degree in English in 1971, and received her master’s degree at the University of South Carolina. As a journalist, she interviewed pivotal players on the national stage like former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison. She wrote and edited for The Washington Informer, the Black-owned newspaper, and later worked for The Reston Times. After her husband, Frank L. Matthews, and Dr. William E. Cox started Black Issues In Higher Education, which later became Diverse: Issues In Higher Education, she spent many years there serving the national publication as a reporter, editor and proofreader.
