WASHINGTON – A new library in Wichita, Kan. will be named after Ronald W. Walters, Ph.D., internationally renowned scholar and civil rights leader who is also a native of the city. Walters served as a professor in the Department of Political Science at Howard University for 25 years and spent nearly 10 years as chair of the department.

“Ron was always a brilliant scholar – a person that was always concerned about the underserved and the poor, and that was his total focus throughout his whole life,” said Walters’s wife Patricia Turner Walters during a Wichita City Council meeting, where the decision to name the library was approved.

Walters was an internationally renowned scholar and activist and an expert on issues affecting the African diaspora. He began his activism in his hometown of Wichita, Kan. when, as president of the local youth chapter of the NAACP, he organized one of the country’s first lunch counter sit-ins to protest segregation. That was in July 1958, two years before students in Greensboro, N.C., staged the sit-ins at the Woolworth counter that are often credited with starting the sit-in movement.

Walters graduated from Fisk University with a degree in history in 1963 and went on to earn a master’s in African studies in 1966 and a doctorate in international studies in 1971, both from American University. He taught at Syracuse University; was a visiting professor at Princeton; a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; and was the first chairman of Afro-American studies at Brandeis University.

From 1971 to 1996, he was a professor in the Political Science Department at Howard University, serving as chairman of the department for nine of those years. For 13 years, he was director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland. At the time of his death in September 2010, Dr. Walters was preparing to return to Howard University as a senior research fellow and lecturer.

 “The library being named in honor of Dr. Ronald Walters is very significant for many reasons,” said Elsie L. Scott, Ph.D., director of the Ronald W. Walters Leadership & Public Policy Center at Howard University. “The city council was impressed with his youthful contribution as an organizer of the Dockum Drugstore sit-in before the famous Greensboro lunch counter sit-in. He kept in touch with people in the community after moving to Washington and went on to become known nationally and internationally for his political, academic and community work.”

Seventy names were submitted to the library board for consideration, and the board narrowed the list to five. After a public voting period, the board voted to submit Walters’ name to the Wichita City Council as their recommendation. The board and the council made their decisions after hearing from Walter’s wife about his life and accomplishments.

Photo (right): Ronald Walters, Courtesy of Evan Vucci/AP

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About Howard University

Founded in 1867, Howard University is a private, research university that is comprised of 13 schools and colleges. Students pursue studies in more than 120 areas leading to undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees. The University operates with a commitment to Excellence in Truth and Service and has produced one Schwarzman Scholar, three Marshall Scholars, four Rhodes Scholars, 11 Truman Scholars, 25 Pickering Fellows and more than 165 Fulbright recipients. Howard also produces more on-campus African-American Ph.D. recipients than any other university in the United States. For more information on Howard University, visit www.howard.edu.

Media Contact: Misha Cornelius, misha.cornelius@howard.edu