EAST LANSING, Mich. – Geneva Smitherman, University Distinguished Professor of English and the director of the Michigan State University African American Language and Literacy Program, will receive the James R. Squire Award from the National Council of Teachers of English on Nov. 18 at a ceremony held during the annual business meeting of the council’s board of directors in Pittsburgh.
A linguist and educational activist, Smitherman is an internationally recognized expert on African American language (sometimes called Ebonics), language education at all levels and language policy.
The award, established in 1967 and named for a former executive director of the council, recognizes those who have had a transforming influence and who have made a lasting intellectual contribution to the profession of teaching English. The award recognizes outstanding service not only to the discipline, but also to the profession of education as a whole, internationally as well as nationally.
“I am genuinely moved by this recognition, which came as a complete surprise,” Smitherman said. “As a daughter of the sharecropping South, whose parents were part of that great 20th-century migration of Blacks to the urban ‘Promised Land’ of the North, I am honored that the National Council of Teachers of English is recognizing my work. For nearly three decades, I have been laboring in the vineyards, holding up the bloodstained banner of Black linguistics, language education and social change. My hope is that a new generation of scholar-activists will be inspired by my example to ‘keep on keepin’ on’ in the struggle for linguistic liberation, educational equity and social justice throughout the global community.”
Smitherman is the author of “Talkin That Talk: Language, Culture and Education in African America” (Routledge, 2000); “Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner” (Houghton Mifflin, 2000); and “Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America” (Houghton Mifflin, 1977), among many other works. She is also director of “My Brother’s Keeper,” an MSU-student mentoring program for middle school African American males in the Detroit Public Schools, which she co-founded with the late Clifford Watson in 1990. For detailed information, visit www.msu.edu/~smither4/g/main.html