On Sunday January 18, 2015 All are Invited to Hear Johnnetta B. Cole, as part of Yale Honors MLK, 6 pm Battel Chapel

Johnnetta Cole

On Sunday, Jan. 18, all are invited to hear Johnnetta B. Cole, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, give an address at Battell Chapel, corner of Elm and College streets, beginning at 6 p.m. Her speech, together with many other campus-wide events, is organized by the university’s Martin Luther King (MLK) Committee, led by the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale and including representatives from a wide range of Yale departments and groups.Cole is the only person to have served as president of two historically black colleges for women in the United States: Spelman College and Bennett College for Women. She did her undergraduate studies at Fisk University and Oberlin College and earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from Northwestern University, where her work focused on African studies.  The first African-American woman to serve as Spelman’s president, Cole is also professor emerita of Emory University, where she was the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Women’s Studies, and African-American Studies.