Charles V. Willie
Born(1927-10-08)October 8, 1927
Dallas, Texas
DiedJanuary 11, 2022(2022-01-11) (aged 94)
Brighton, Massachusetts
OccupationProfessor
SpouseMary Sue Willie
Children3; including Sarah Willie-LeBreton
Academic background
Alma materMorehouse College
Atlanta University
Syracuse University
ThesisSocio-economic and ethnic areas of Syracuse, New York. (1957)
Academic work
DisciplineSociology
Sub-disciplinedesegregation, higher education, public health, race relations, urban community problems
InstitutionsSyracuse University
State University of New York Upstate Medical University
Harvard University

Charles Vert Willie (October 8, 1927 – January 11, 2022) was an American sociologist who was the Charles William Eliot Professor of Education, Emeritus at Harvard University. His areas of research included desegregation, higher education, public health, race relations, urban community problems, and family life. Willie considered himself an applied sociologist, concerned with solving social problems.

Biography

Willie was born October 8, 1927, in Dallas, Texas, the grandson of Louis Willie, a former slave.[1] His father, Louis Willie, was a pullman porter. His mother, Carrie Sykes, was one of the first black women to earn a college degree in Texas but could not teach in the segregated Dallas school system because she was married. She, therefore, home-schooled her children until they could ride in the back of the streetcars to their segregated schools.[2]

He received his B.A. from Morehouse College in 1948 where he was class president,[3] an M.A. from Atlanta University in 1949, and his Ph.D. in sociology from Syracuse University in 1957.[4] He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. For many years he resided with his wife Mary Sue Willie in Concord, Massachusetts.[5][6][2] He had three children who have careers in government (James Theodore Willie), construction (Martin Charles Willie), and academia (Sarah Willie-LeBreton).[7]

Willie died at his home in Brighton on January 11, 2022, at the age of 94.[8][2]

Career

Willie became the first tenured African-American professor at Syracuse University where he taught from 1950 to 1974.[9][10] He served President John F. Kennedy as the Research Director of Washington Action for Youth, a delinquency-prevention planning program in Washington, D.C. sponsored by the President's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime from 1962–1964.[11] He returned to Syracuse University from 1964–1966.[12] In July 1961 Willie first brought his Morehouse College classmate, Martin Luther King Jr. to speak at Syracuse,[13] and again in July 1965 he introduced King to an audience of 1,000 at a major speech at Syracuse University.[10][14][15] In 1966–67, he was on leave from Syracuse as a Visiting Lecturer in Sociology at the Harvard Medical School in its Department of Psychiatry as part of the Laboratory of Community Psychiatry.[16] He was chairman of the Department of Sociology.[17] He was vice president of student affairs from 1972–1974 at Syracuse.[18][19] At the time he left Syracuse to accept a tenured position as professor of education at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education in 1974.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Willie and nineteen others (from among over 1,000 candidates) [20] to the President's Commission on Mental Health.[21]

Willie was a member of the Board of Directors of the Social Science Research Council. He served as vice president of the American Sociological Association and president (1974–75) of the Eastern Sociological Society.[22]

He also served as a consultant, expert witness, and court-appointed master in major school desegregation cases in various large cities including the landmark case of Boston (1974) from which emerged the "Controlled Choice" plan popularized by Willie and Michael Alves and used in Boston for 10 years and Cambridge for 20 years.[23] Willie did desegregation planning work in Hartford, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Little Rock, Milwaukee, San Jose, Seattle, and St. Louis; and in other municipalities such as St. Lucie County and Lee County, Florida, and Somerville, Cambridge, and Brockton, Massachusetts.

Willie was a lay member of the Episcopal Church in the United States, a former member of its Executive Council and a past vice president of the House of Deputies, one of two houses, with the House of Bishops, that makes up the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America.[24] Willie was the first African-American elected as Vice-President of the House of Deputies (1970).[25] Although a lay member of this religious association, he was invited to deliver the ordination sermon at an irregular service held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the Church of the Advocate, July 29, 1974 in which the first eleven women were ordained as priests in this denomination.[26][27][28] Some members of the Episcopal Church were reluctant to acknowledge the priesthood of women, and the ordination was disputed. Meeting in an emergency session in Chicago, the House of Bishops invalidated the ordination by a vote of 128 to 9 because the four officiating bishops had "not fulfilled constitutional and canonical requirements." Willie then resigned on August 18, 1974, his elected office of vice-president, in protest at the Bishops' failure to uphold the ordination and accord women equal rights.[24][29] Ms. magazine designated him a male hero in its tenth-anniversary issue (August 1982). He and forty other men were honored for taking courageous action on behalf of women.

Awards and honors

In 2004 Willie received the American Sociological Association's William Foote Whyte Distinguished Career Award; in 2005 he was co-recipient with Charles Tilly of the ASA's W. E. B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award.[30] He had previously received in 1994 the ASA's DuBois-Johnson-Frazier Award.[31] In February 2006 Willie received the Eastern Sociological Society Merit Award, the highest award it can bestow on members.[32]

A number of colleges, universities, and seminaries conferred honorary doctoral degrees upon Willie including Syracuse University, 1992; Haverford College, 2000;[33] Episcopal Divinity School, 2004; Emerson College, 2008, Morgan State University, 2013;[1][34] and Beacon College, 2019.[35] In June 2000 Syracuse University awarded Willie its George Arents Pioneer Medal, SU's highest alumni honor as well as the Chancellor’s Citation Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.[36][37]

In 2013 the Eastern Sociological Society established an annual award in Dr. Willie's name to be given to a minority graduate student who demonstrates exceptional scholarly promise, "in recognition of Willie's work on racial and ethnic minorities, his support of minority graduate students, and his invaluable contributions to ESS."[38] In 2021 the Harvard University Graduate School of Education renamed a Doctor of Education Leadership fellowship as the Dr. Charles Willie Fellowship. The fellowship provides an Ed.L.D. student with financial support during their three-year doctoral program.[39]

Partial bibliography

This section may contain excessive or irrelevant examples. Please help improve the article by adding descriptive text and removing less pertinent examples. (January 2022)

Willie was the author or editor of over 100 articles and 30 books on issues of race, gender, socioeconomic status, mental health, religion, education, urban communities, and family relations.[39] Bibliographic citations from OCLC Worldcat.[40]

Archives

References

  1. ^ a b "Charles Willie's Biography". The HistoryMakers. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved January 18, 2022. accessed 9/21/09
  2. ^ a b c Marquard, Bryan (January 16, 2022). "Charles Willie, an architect of 'controlled-choice' school desegregation plan, dies at 94". The Boston Globe. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
  3. ^ "Morehouse, Spelman Prom 40 Years after Boycott by Martin Luther King's Class". Jet. June 27, 1988. pp. 22–23.
  4. ^ Willie, Charles Vert (1957). Socio-economic and Ethnic Areas of Syracuse, New York (PhD). Syracuse University. OCLC 663122556. Retrieved June 13, 2023.
  5. ^ Charles Vert Willie and Richard J. Reddick (2003). A New Look at Black Families. Walnut Creek, California: Rowman Altamira. p. 183.
  6. ^ "Charles Vert Willie, Concord Oral History Program, Renee Garrelick, Interviewer". March 23, 1989. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  7. ^ "Education: Father and Daughter Sociologists". Jet. March 24, 2003. p. 13.
  8. ^ Risen, Clay (February 6, 2022). "Charles Vert Willie, 94, Dies; Studied, and Defended, Racial Diversity". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 7, 2022.
  9. ^ Korey, Eileen (January 18, 2022). "In Memoriam: Charles V. Willie G'57, H'92, A Champion for Social Justice". Syracuse University News. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  10. ^ a b Billmyer, Steve (January 17, 2022). "Charles Willie, 94, Syracuse's University first Black tenured professor". The Post-Standard. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  11. ^ "Juvenile Delinquency in Racially Mixed Neighborhoods". American Journal of Sociology. 29 (5). October 1964.
  12. ^ Chouinard, Kyle (March 10, 2022). "Charles Willie, SU's 1st Black tenured professor, remembered as collaborator, advocate". The Daily Orange. Retrieved June 13, 2023.
  13. ^ Gutierrez, Matthew (January 21, 2019). "In Syracuse, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s messages resonate half a century later". The Daily Orange. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  14. ^ Kirst, Sean (January 18, 2015). "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Syracuse, just after Selma: Moment of hope, a challenge still unmet". Syracuse Post-Standard. Retrieved January 18, 2022.
  15. ^ Excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at Syracuse University, July 1965, retrieved January 19, 2022
  16. ^ Race, Ethnicity, and Socioeconomic Status, 1983
  17. ^ Jet June 29, 1967, p. 45
  18. ^ Greene, John Robert (November 1, 1998). Syracuse University: Volume V: The Eggers Years. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. pp. 73, 118. ISBN 9780815605492. OCLC 1285849861. Retrieved March 29, 2022.
  19. ^ "School of Education - Syracuse University". April 23, 2018. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  20. ^ John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters. "The American Presidency Project". Santa Barbara, California. Retrieved November 17, 2009.
  21. ^ Gerald N. Grob (2005). "Public Policy and Mental Illnesses: Jimmy Carter's Presidential Commission on Mental Health". The Milbank Quarterly. Vol. 83, no. 3. pp. 425–456.
  22. ^ "Home Page". www.essnet.org. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  23. ^ Marin Jorgensen (November 1, 2005). "The "Accidental Career": A HGSE News interview with Professor Charles Vert Willie". HGSE News. Retrieved November 17, 2009.
  24. ^ a b Millard, Egan (January 14, 2022). "Charles V. Willie, first African American House of Deputies vice president, dies at 94". Episcopal News Service. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  25. ^ "Welcome · The Church Awakens: African Americans and the Struggle for Justice". episcopalarchives.org. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  26. ^ "Women's Ministries". Archived from the original on May 3, 2011. Retrieved November 17, 2009. accessed 11/17/09
  27. ^ Charles V. Willie. "The Priesthood of All Believers, a sermon ...". in Betty Bone Schiess (2003). Why Me Lord?: One Woman's Ordination to the Priesthood with Commentary and Complaint. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. pp. 145–??.
  28. ^ Eleanor Blau. "11 Women Ordained Episcopal Priests; Church Law Defied :Women Become Episcopal Priests; Tenets Defied". New York Times. p. 69. ProQuest 79623490.
  29. ^ Eleanor Blau (August 19, 1974). "Episcopal Leader Quits; Protests Curb on Women :Regret at Resignation Debate Goes On". New York Times. p. 50. ProQuest 79373927.
  30. ^ Source: "Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award | American Sociological Association". Archived from the original on January 8, 2009. Retrieved November 17, 2009. accessed 11/17/09
  31. ^ "Charles V. Willie". Harvard Graduate School of Education. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  32. ^ "Search Results". Harvard Graduate School of Education. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  33. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on October 8, 2009. Retrieved September 19, 2009.((cite web)): CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  34. ^ "Morgan Students Celebrate 137th Commencement". Morgan State University Newsroom. May 18, 2013. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  35. ^ "Beacon College Commencement Salutes Record Class, Social Justice Advocates". Beacon College. May 29, 2019. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  36. ^ http://archives.syr.edu/awards/arents.html Archived 2010-06-09 at the Wayback Machine accessed 11/17/09
  37. ^ "Inaugural One University Awards Honor Campus Community Members". Syracuse University News. April 26, 2017. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  38. ^ "Home Page". www.essnet.org. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  39. ^ a b Anderson, Jill. "HGSE Remembers Charles Willie". Retrieved January 15, 2022.
  40. ^ "Results for 'au:willie, charles v.' [WorldCat.org]". www.worldcat.org. Retrieved January 19, 2022.
  41. ^ "Charles Vert Willie Papers". Retrieved January 12, 2022.

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