Faculty Spotlight: Mary Frances Berry, by Cara Griffin, for The Penn Institute for Urban Research

Mary Frances Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History. She is the former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, former Assistant Secretary for Education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the author of thirteen books. 

 

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Mary Frances Berry

 

Mary Frances Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History. She is the former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, former Assistant Secretary for Education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the author of thirteen books. Dr. Berry is a Fellow of the Society of American Historians and of the National Academy of Public Administration and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Society for Legal History. In recognition of her scholarship and public service, she has received 35 honorary doctoral degrees and many awards, including the NAACP's Roy Wilkins Award, the Rosa Parks Award of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Ebony Magazine Black Achievement Award, and the Roy Rosenzweig Distinguished Service Award of the Organization of American Historians. She was 1990-91 President of the Organization of American Historians. She is one of 75 women featured in I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America, and the Sienna College Research Institute and the Women's Hall of Fame designated her one of “America's Women of the Century.” 

 

Read the entire story https://penniur.upenn.edu/publications/faculty-spotlight-mary-frances-berry