Tag: National Newspaper Publishers Association

On March 27, the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) honored the late Dr. Ronald Walters, who was a Black political scholar, at the Thurgood Marshall Center in the District of Columbia. “This is a special time to honor Dr. Walters,” Dr. Elsie Scott, the director of Howard’s Ronald Walters Center. “His spirit is in this room. In 1958, he led other young Blacks in a successful sit-in protest of the Dockum Drug Store in Wichita for refusing to serve African Americans and this took place two years before the more highly publicized Greensboro, N.C. sit-ins. He came to Howard University in 1971 and became chairman of the political science department before leaving it in 1996 to become the head of the Afro-American studies department at the University of Maryland, College Park. “Ronald Walters was a scholar and intellectual,” Brazile said. “Ron believed that Black people should work within the political system to change it.” Winbush said that Walters was a firm believer in Black liberation and was a proponent of reparations. “He believed Black people were due for the centuries of work put into this country without compensation.” Madison said he first met Walters at the 1972 Black Political convention that took place in Gary, Ind., and was impressed by him then. We had a private meeting where he told me how to register voters to help Jackson without getting in trouble with the NAACP.” Madison echoed the sentiments of Scott when he said that Walters would go to the Black media first with news. “When Ron wanted to say something, he went to the Black media first,” Madison said.