Career
| 1984 | Sonia Sanchez |
| 1985 | Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) |
| 1986 | Paula Giddings |
| 1987 | James Baldwin |
| 1988 | Dick Gregory |
| 1989 | Nikki Giovanni |
| 1990 | Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) |
| 1991 | Ivan Van Sertima |
| 1992 | |
| 1993 | Jawanza Kunjufu |
| 1994 | Kwame Toure (formerly Stokely Carmichael) |
| 1995 | Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) |
| 1996 | Joyce Ann Joyce |
| 1997 | Michael Eric Dyson |
| 1998 | John Edgar Wideman |
| 1999 | Nikki Giovanni |
| 2000 | George Curry |
| 2001 | Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) |
| 2002 | Michael Eric Dyson |
| 2003 | Sonia Sanchez |
| 2004 | Susan L. Taylor |
| 2005 | Nikki Giovanni |
| 2006 | Cornel West |
| 2007 | Henry Louis Gates, Jr. |
| 2008 | Angela Davis |
| 2009 | William Julius Wilson |
| 2010 | Ian K. Smith |
| 2011 | Henry Louis Gates |
| 2012 | Cory Booker |
Over a long teaching career, he held numerous positions including visiting professorships with colleges and universities such as Wesleyan University, University of Connecticut, Florida A & M University, Grambling State College, and the University of Chicago. From the 1940s through the 1960s he held positions from Professor of English to Professor and Chairman of Languages and Literature, as well as Dean of Delaware State College. He was also Professor and Chairman of English in the Division of Liberal Arts at Quinnipiac College.
He finished his career in education as a Professor of English, with a specialty in African-American literature and poetry at the University of Chicago from 1970 until his death in 1982. While at the University, George E. Kent is remembered as a pioneer for being among the first tenured African-American professors at the University of Chicago and as the first African-American professor of English. Dr. Kent should also be remembered as an intense scholar and intellectual dedicated to excellence in his work as well as in the expectations he had of the many students he taught and mentored.
Throughout his tenure at the University of Chicago, he offered excellence. He brought that into the school, and for his students to whom he was fiercely loyal and held high expectations for them pursuing not only their studies but their lives in excellence. It is in this respect that the Organization of Black students honors Dr. George E. Kent annually at the OBS George E. Kent Lecture.
Kent taught at Delaware State College in Dover from 1949 to 1960, and then at Quinnipiac College in Hamden, Connecticut until 1969. He then joined the University of Chicago, becoming a full professor there in 1970, a position he retained until his death. The annual George E. Kent Lecture at the University of Chicago is named in his honour.
His specialism was Afro-American literature. He completed the first full biography of the poet Gwendolyn Brooks just before his death from cancer in 1982.
Read more about this topic: George E. Kent
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)