History Professor Appointed to Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation Board

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Calvin White Jr.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Calvin White Jr., associate professor of history and director of the African and American studies program in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, has been named to the board of directors of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. He was added to the board for 2014 along with one other new member, Helen Dorado Alessi of Plainview, N.Y.

“I welcomed the opportunity to serve Arkansas in the capacity of a board member,” White said. “Governor Rockefeller's love for the state led him to not only give of his time, but he also assured that substantive change continued after his death. The foundation is working hard to change Arkansas and I simply could not turn down the opportunity to be apart of something special.”

The Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation has helped to build and sustain the organizations that serve and strengthen Arkansas for nearly 40 years. Through grant making and strategic partnerships, they are working hard to help close the economic and educational gaps that leave too many Arkansas families in persistent poverty.

White’s research focuses on the extent to which class, respectability and the efforts of racial uplift intersected in the development of African Americans’ religious traditions and racial identity after emancipation in the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta. He published The Rise to Respectability: Race Religion and the Church of God in Christ in 2012, which documents the history of the Church of God in Christ and examines its cultural and religious impact on African Americans and on the history of the South.

White gave the 12^th annual Martin Luther King Jr. presentation Thursday, Jan. 23, at NorthWest Arkansas Community College. His presentation, “Was It All A Dream?: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Vision Today,” celebrated King’s work and focused on how America values equality.

Yvette Murphy-Erby, interim associate dean for Fulbright College, also a member of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation board. She was appointed in 2009 and served as chair-elect in 2011 and 2012.