Distinguished Career Awards
by Peter Wallenstein (fall 2007)
In 2007, the VSSA initiated a new category of recognition, the Distinguished Career Award, which might go to someone we viewed as particularly notable for some combination of reasons—and, unlike our other recognition, regardless of whether the recipient might be able to attend and participate in the conference in general and the plenary session in particular.
For 2007, the VSSA presented a Distinguished Service Award to Oliver W. Hill Sr., civil rights attorney extraordinaire. Mr. Hill, who graduated with Thurgood Marshall at Howard University Law School in 1933, was accompanied to the conference by his son, Virginia State University psychology professor Oliver W. Hill Jr. Two months shy of 100 years old, Mr. Hill spoke to a rapt audience of a few of his experiences over the generations as well as of his continuing commitments.
Mr. Hill began his career as a civil rights attorney as one of the lawyers working on cases that sought to bring the salaries of public schools teachers in the black schools of Virginia in line with what their white counterparts were receiving. In the early 1940s in Richmond, for example, the lowest paid white teacher, a first-year woman in a white elementary school, received at least a dollar more than the highest paid black man serving as principal of a black high school. In 1948, Mr. Hill gained election for one term to the Richmond City Council, the first African American to win election to that group since the 1890s. Hill was a leading attorney in the Virginia case from Prince Edward County that became part of the cluster of cases known to history as Brown v. Board of Education. His was a towering presence across many decades.
Oliver Hill died this past summer. Invited by the Richmond Times-Dispatch to comment on his life, I wrote an op-ed that appeared on August 12, the day of his funeral. (The full text of the published op-ed is available for reading on my website at Virginia Tech.) The newspaper found it necessary at the last minute to make some cuts in what I had written, and I have chosen to include that missing material here, as these two passages distinguish a personal retrospective from simply an academic evaluation of his public life, all that remained in the published version; and one of them speaks directly to the VSSA conference and the Association’s recognition of Mr. Hill’s extraordinary life:
I ran into Mr. Hill any number of times over his last twenty years. My two most recent memories are sweet ones indeed. Three summers ago, my wife and I stopped by his house to give him a signed copy of my new book Blue Laws and Black Codes: Conflict, Courts, and Change in Twentieth-Century Virginia, which had a chapter “The Siege against Segregation: Black Virginians and the Law of Civil Rights” in which he played the central role. We spent a delightful hour or so together, with me reading bits of it to him (by then he had gone blind), and he would comment, often extending the treatment.
And then this past March his son accompanied Mr. Hill to the annual conference of the Virginia Social Science Association, where he was presented a distinguished lifetime service award, yet another in a long string of such awards he received during the last two decades of his very long life. There, his voice was still pretty strong, as was his handshake, and his convictions remained indomitable.
There was a second Distinguished Service Award as well. Late last March, I published an op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch announcing and explaining the imminent presentation of a Distinguished Service Award to Dr. Yacob Hailemariam (the full text of this op-ed is also available for reading on my website at Virginia Tech):
Dr. Yacob, as
he is known to colleagues and former students, is falsely charged
with capital crimes in his native Ethiopia.
Two years ago, Yacob Hailemariam, who had taught at Norfolk
State University for some 20 years, took early retirement to return
to his native Ethiopia so he could run for a seat in his nation's
parliament.
Victorious in
the polls in May 2005, he and his reform colleagues soon found
themselves in prison, where they have languished for well over a
year. Charges against
Hailemariam include genocide — a particularly vicious charge given
his active work on behalf of the United Nations in the 1990s
investigating genocide in Rwanda.
Friends, relatives, and other supporters of what Amnesty
International calls prisoners of conscience have rallied in support
of Hailemariam and his jailed colleagues.
WITH YACOB
Hailemariam in mind, the Virginia Social Science Association (VSSA)
decided some months ago to create a new award, which will be given
this year for the first time.
The VSSA, meeting this weekend at the University of Richmond
for its annual conference, is conferring upon him a special
Distinguished Career award.
While he was in prison and his daughter was in Ethiopia to be near him, Dr. Hailemariam’s wife and son attended the VSSA conference, and his son, Sefonias Yacob, spoke on his behalf at the plenary session. A few days later, his son sent me an email message that said in part:
I just talked to my sister in Ethiopia and she told me that all of the prisoners were quite happy to hear of the VSSA's work and they even held a mock ceremony of sorts, where my father spoke to all of the prisoners in acceptance of the award. So needless to say, this was a nice piece of news.
Months later, in August, the delightful news came that Dr. Hailemariam and his imprisoned colleagues had been released. They were free at last. From VSSA board member Thomas E. Poulin, who had originated the nomination of Dr. Hailemariam for a special award, came this message in late October:
Last Saturday, I had the distinct honor and privilege to attend a small picnic. Dr. Yacob had returned to his home in Virginia Beach. He is doing very well. After his release, he spent some time continuing his efforts towards democratization in Ethiopia. He is now home re-grouping, but intends to return to Ethiopia with his wife, Tegist, to attempt to take his rightful seat in Parliament, which was previously denied him. He repeatedly expressed his gratitude for the efforts of the VSSA, stating it was an incredible morale booster to him and his colleagues in prison.