Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

Encyclopedia of African-American Writing: Five Centuries of Contribution

Cole (1st married name; 2nd married name: Robinson), Johnnetta (née Betsch)

10/19/1936–

Scholarly, nonfiction—cultural anthropology, self-help; educator, college president

Born in Jacksonville, FL, Johnnetta Cole is the granddaughter of Florida’s first black millionaire, Abraham Lincoln Lewis and the director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. When Johnnetta enrolled at Fisk University at age 15 (through its early-admissions program), she knew right away that she had found her way into a magical, awesome environment. A bright girl, she was already well educated when she entered, but Fisk offered her a wealth of new opportunities for learning—as just one example, almost daily, she ran across the school librarian—scholar, novelist, storyteller, and poet Arna Bontemps.

Just before her junior year, Johnnetta then transferred to Oberlin, in the Midwest, where she met students and scholars from across the nation and around the world—and she discovered her passion for finding out about people from other places through the field of cultural anthropology. Anthropology revealed to her the link between African Americans and their West African ancestors, as evident in their cultural traditions. She pursued a bachelor’s, then a master’s, then even a doctorate in anthropology, so that she might teach to others, opening their eyes as hers had been opened. While earning her doctorate, Johnnetta Betsch married and became Johnnetta B. Cole.

Over the next two decades, Cole taught at several colleges, from Los Angeles to Washington State to Massachusetts to New York. In 1987, she was asked whether she would like to be considered as a candidate for the presidency of Spelman College. Shocked at first, she decided that she would. Soon after, she was appointed the first African-American woman to preside over that institution (following three European-American women and one African-American man). During her presidency, the daughter of Camille and Bill Cosby was attending Spelman, and they endorsed Cole’s presidency to the tune of $20 million—a tremendous gift for a privately funded university.

In addition to numerous scholarly articles and a regular column in the popular magazine McCall’s, Cole’s publications include Anthropology for the Eighties: Introductory Readings (1982), All American Women: Lines That Divide, Ties That Bind (1986), Anthropology for the Nineties: Introductory Readings (1988), and Conversations: Straight Talk with America’s Sister President (1993). Her work has received many awards and most recently, the Alston-Jones International Civil and Human Rights Award (2013).

References:

1 

33T. BAAW. BWA:AHE. TAWH. WDAW —Tonya Bolden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnnetta_Colehttps://www.makers.com/johnnetta-cole

Editor’s Note:

Cole continued at Spelman until 1997, took a brief breather, and then presided over Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, another historically black university for women. In addition to receiving at least 40 honorary degrees, Cole has been inducted into the Working Woman Hall of Fame and has received the Jessie Bernard Wise Woman Award and American Woman Award (both 1990). In addition to the aforementioned books, Cole has written Traditional and Wage-Earning Labor among Tribal Liberians (1975), Race toward Equality (1986), and Dream the Boldest Dreams: And Other Lessons of Life (1997). With Beverly Guy-Sheftall, she wrote Gender Talk: Sexism, Power, and Politics in the African American Community (2003; also subtitled The Struggle for Women’s Equality in African American Communities). In addition, she has contributed to numerous periodicals and anthologies and serves on the editorial board of Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly, Black Scholar, Emerge, and SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women. She shares three sons (David, Aaron, and Ethan Che) with her first husband, economist Robert Cole (1960-1982), and two stepsons with her second husband, Arthur Robinson III (since 1988).

References:

2 

B. CAO-05. Wiki. Goldsworthy, Joan, and Ralph G. Zerbonia, in BB. Rivo, Lisa E., in AANB. Amazon.com.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"Cole (1st Married Name; 2nd Married Name: Robinson), Johnnetta (née Betsch)." Encyclopedia of African-American Writing: Five Centuries of Contribution, edited by Bryan Conn & Tara Bynum, Salem Press, 2018. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=AAW3E_0145.
APA 7th
Cole (1st married name; 2nd married name: Robinson), Johnnetta (née Betsch). Encyclopedia of African-American Writing: Five Centuries of Contribution, In B. Conn & T. Bynum (Eds.), Salem Press, 2018. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=AAW3E_0145.
CMOS 17th
"Cole (1st Married Name; 2nd Married Name: Robinson), Johnnetta (née Betsch)." Encyclopedia of African-American Writing: Five Centuries of Contribution, Edited by Bryan Conn & Tara Bynum. Salem Press, 2018. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=AAW3E_0145.