DIVERSE ISSUES IN HIGHER EDUCATION -- 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 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.
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 Raymond Winbush; and NNPA publisher 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.”