Explorations in Black Leadership

Explorations in Black Leadership, an oral history project co-sponsored by the College’s Institute for Public History and the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, initiated its series of public forums by bringing four African-American leaders to the University this fall.

The black leadership project attempts both to establish criteria for determining effective leadership and to identify the factors that have contributed to the success of African-American leaders. Invited guests — leaders in the African-American community, many of whom were active in the Civil Rights movement — participate in public forums and in private videotaped interviews, conducted by history professor and current NAACP chairman Julian Bond, during their two-day visit to Grounds. The information generated by these visits will eventually be available to scholars, businessmen and public schools.

The project’s guests this semester were Virginia State Senator Henry Marsh, a civil rights attorney and the first black mayor of Richmond; Elaine Jones, president and director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; Julius Chambers, civil rights lawyer and chancellor of North Carolina Central University; and Mary Futrell, dean of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University and former president of the Virginia Education Association and the National Education Association.