The first endowed lectureship in the history of the College of Liberal Arts, a permanent activity in the intellectual life of the college and university, the Annual Ruthe T. Sheffey Lecture in African-American Female Studies was established in 2014 by Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey, a 1947 graduate of Morgan State College and Professor of English Emerita, who served on the faculty of Morgan for sixty-two years.
The aim of the lecture is to preserve the African-American literary legacy and enrich the learning environment on the University campus by bringing notable African-American female scholars to campus annually, during Women’s History Month (in March), to present lectures focusing on the African-American literary tradition and the role it has played in the lives of African Americans.
Dr. Sheffey hopes, through the lecture, to provide a foundation of courage and emotional security for AfricanAmerican youth and, in her own words, “to have [them] remember the sources of hope, self-respect, resilience and endurance that fortified their ancestors in the bleak and brutish Dantean landscape of slavery and beyond.”
The 2023 lecture is the seventh in a series of annual lectures at Morgan Sate University that lives in memory of iconic women who served not only as cultural anchors, but also as reservoirs of love.
DR. RUTHE T. SHEFFEY
Professor of English Emerita
Longest Continuously-Serving Professor in Morgan’s 156-Year History (1949 2011)
Visionary Founder of the Zora Neale Hurston Society (1984) and Publisher of the Zora Neale Hurston Forum (1986-2010)
Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey is a Morgan Legend! For over a half-century, she was the standard bearer for the Department of English and Language Arts, and she was its benchmark for excellence in teaching, in scholarship and in service to the profession and the community. She remains symbol and substance both form and fable of the Great Morgan Tradition of distinguished graduates who return to the University to renew the pursuit of excellence that was their passion as students and to carry on the standard of excellence that was their yardstick for achievement.
With a 1947 Bachelor of Arts Degree in English from Morgan to her credit, Ruthe T. Sheffey went on to earn the Master of Arts Degree from Howard University and the Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. She also did post-doctoral study at The Johns Hopkins University. After a brief period of teaching English and French at Claflin College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, she returned to her Alma Mater as an Instructor of English in 1949. The rest is history!
For 62 years, Dr. Sheffey was one of Morgan’s Pillars of Excellence in every respect. A master teacher, a curriculum innovator and builder, an academic leader, a brilliant nationally-known scholar and an unwavering supporter of Morgan; Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey was indeed, and in deed as well as words, the gentle and eloquent voice proclaiming the high standards and remarkable achievement of what is now Maryland’s only designated public urban doctoral research university.
Over the years, Dr. Sheffey was a teacher par excellence, one who set a record as the second longest-serving member of the faculty, second only to her former colleague, the late Dr. Jean Fisher Turpin, a fellow alumna who devoted sixty-five years of service to Morgan as its resident scholar in English grammar. During this period Dr. Sheffey’s name was synonymous with excellence in teaching. Whether in classes for Freshman English, or Humanities, or Advanced Composition, or Shakespeare, or Women’s Literature in the African Diaspora, Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey was one who, like Chaucer’s clerk, would “gladly learn and gladly teach.” It is said that, in the classroom, she lit
up the eyes of her students and filled the room with joy the joy of learning and growing and becoming better increasingly.
Her consummate, polished skill in teaching and inspiring her students produced a Pulitzer-Prize-winning short story writer in James Alan McPherson; a Chief Judge of Maryland’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, in retired Judge Robert M. Bell; a head speechwriter for President William Jefferson Clinton in Terry Edmonds; academic leaders in Associate Dean Barbara Griffin and former Dean Burney J. Hollis; university professors in Dr. Linda M. Carter, the late Dr. Stephen Gibson, and Dr. Ralph Reckley, Sr.; a magnificent corporate lawyer and benefactor in the late Attorney James H. Gilliam, Jr.; a nationally acclaimed singer in Maysa Leak; a great legal mind in Maryland Assistant Attorney General Turhan E. Robinson; a magnificent hospitality manager in Thompson Hospitality’s Roger Avery; and countless other Morgan graduates who attribute their love of language, literature and le mot juste and their passionate pursuit of excellence to the unmatched tutelage of Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey.
For some educators teaching is a job; it is what they do with their days. For others, it is a career; it is what they do with their lives. But for a few educators like Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey, teaching is a passion; it is an intense drive, an over-arching feeling and conviction about human development, their very reason for being. In the words of her appreciative students, Dr. Sheffey brought an uncontainable joy to the classroom, and it is almost as though, like Zora Neale Hurston, Dr. Sheffey had a rainbow round her shoulders that radiated her love of teaching and learning.
Dr. Sheffey’s devotion to teaching also manifested itself in program and curriculum development. As Chairperson of the Department of English in the seventies, in addition to maintaining the high standards of the writing program, Dr. Sheffey literally established a new and visionary trajectory for the Humanities Curriculum already praised by the Middle States Association as a major component of the model liberal education program at Morgan and aimed it clearly toward the twenty-first century, when, with the assistance of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, she spearheaded a revision of the program to make it not only interdisciplinary, but also multicultural. From the seventies to the recent past, the two required Humanities courses have reached beyond the traditionally-taught cultures of the Western World to impart an appreciation for peoples of other cultures, ways of life and artistic achievements, including the literature and arts of African Americans, Native Americans, Africans, cultures in the African Diaspora, Middle-Easterners and Asians. For the multicultural urban university that Morgan is today, this visionary program development left indelible impressions in asphalt on several generations of Morgan urban students, who are now
more familiar with the global community than graduates of other institutions. The required two-volume textbook for those courses is dedicated to Dr. Sheffey for her foresight in developing the program.
In addition to being a superb companion in learning for her undergraduate and graduate students, Dr. Sheffey has been a pace-setting scholar. She was the Department’s expert on Shakespeare and conducted research on Shakespeare in London; Stratford, England; Stratford, Canada; and Stratford, Connecticut. A past President of the Maryland Chapter of the College English Association and the Langston Hughes Society, Founding President of the Zora Neale Hurston Society, a member of the Maryland Humanities Council for six years, a past chairperson of the Founding Board of Morgan’s WEAA-FM Radio Station, and a past member of the Board of Advanced Savings and Loan Association; she also attained status as a major authority on African-American and women’s literature and, over the years, has been an invited guest lecturer at Kentucky State University, Loyola University, New York University at Albany, then-Towson State University, University of Maryland College Park, University of Maryland Eastern Shore and University of Pennsylvania. She was a pioneer in the forefront of feminist scholarship in America, and she inspired and guided the world’s renewed appreciation for anthropologist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston. Having conducted research on Hurston in the Schomberg Collection at the New York Public Library, the MoorlandSpingarn Library at Howard University and the Library of Congress, Dr. Sheffey advanced to the cutting edge of Hurston scholarship by holding the first major national conference on Zora Neale Hurston, by publishing a collection of essays on Hurston, Rainbow Round My Shoulder: The Zora Neale Hurston Symposium Papers (Morgan State University Press, 1982), and by founding the Zora Neale Hurston Society two years later, in 1984. In 1986 she became the Founding Editor of the Zora Neale Hurston Forum, an annual which publishes scholarly essays on the life, writings, contemporaries and times of Hurston. Prior to her “Hurston Years,” Dr. Sheffey published a variety of scholarly pieces on British and African-American literature, and she co-edited, with her Morgan colleague Eugenia Collier, a reader for students, titled Impressions in Asphalt: Images of Urban America in Literature (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969). Later, in 1989, she published a collection of her own essays, Trajectory: Fueling the Future and Preserving the African -American Literary Past – Essays in Criticism (1962-1986) (Morgan State University Press, 1989).
Over the years, Morgan has come to know Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey not only for her outstanding teaching and scholarship and for her exceptional service to and support of the University one whose generosity and beneficence have few equals and include generous donations to the Morgan Capital Campaign and leading the Morgan State University
Press for more than 20 years but also for her lofty ideals, her uncompromising academic principles, the warm and generous camaraderie which she has shared with colleagues and students for her professional lifetime, and her admirable and unmatched flourishes of rhetorical eloquence. In 1992-94 and 1994-95, Morgan awarded her the highly coveted Dr. Iva G. Jones Medallion Emblem, which goes to faculty members who have demonstrated excellence in teaching, research and service. In 1998, the Department of English and Language Arts established the Ruthe T. Sheffey Award for Scholarship, Service and Teaching in her honor and bestowed it upon her in 2000. In 1996, Dr. Sheffey was given The DuBois Circle 90th Anniversary Celebration Award for Contemporary Contribution to the Legacy of Literacy Inspired by the Life and Works of Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, and, in 1998, she was inducted as a Charter Member
of the Morgan State University Hall of Fame and was presented a diamond Hall of Fame watch in her honor in 2000. In 2005, she was given the Zora Neale Hurston Festival Award in recognition of lifelong contributions to the Zora Neale Hurston legacy; later, in 2007, Morgan bestowed upon her the Outstanding Morgan Woman Award; in 2009, she won two Dean’s Medals for Excellence as teacher and scholar; and, in August 2009, she won the Award for Outstanding Teaching from the Division of Academic Affairs. On June 17, 2010, Morgan dedicated the center Lecture Hall in the new $22 million Communications Center to Dr. Sheffey and honored her for being at the center of the intellectual life of Morgan for over sixty years. Since 2010, Dr. Sheffey has been decorated with the following additional awards: the Alpha Kappa Alpha, Epsilon Omega Chapter, Award for Dedication of the Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey Lecture Hall (2010); the NOBEL-Women Maryland Shining Star Award as education advocate (2012); the Women of Courage Honors as founder of the Zora Neale Hurston Society (1984-2011) (2013); the Howard L. Cornish Chapter of the Morgan State University Alumni Association Appreciation Award in Recognition of her highly distinguished career as a pioneer of feminist scholarship, as a literary and academic scholar, as an educational visionary and as founder of the Zora Neale Hurston Society (2018); the Shero Award for Academic Excellence and Contributions to the Zora Neale Hurston Legacy (2017); and the Epsilon Omega Chapter, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Diamond Soror Award for 75 years of membership (2021).
In 2014, Dr. Sheffey went the second mile once again by endowing the Ruthe T. Sheffey Annual Lecture in African-American Female Studies. In 2017, President David Wilson appointed her Sesquicentennial Poet Laureate and charged her with writing the Sesquicentennial Poem for Morgan’s 150th anniversary celebration. Today we hold the Seventh Annual Ruthe T. Sheffey Lecture in African-American Female Studies.
Burney J. Hollis, Ph.D. Professor of English Emeritus, Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts Member, MSU Board of Regents and Former Student of Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey
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Thursday, Marcy 31, 2016
Inaugural Ruthe T. Sheffey Lecture
“Spirit Work in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God”
(THE LATE) DR. CHERYL A. WALL
Board of Governors Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English, Rutgers University
Thursday, March 30, 2017
2nd Annual Ruthe T. Sheffey Lecture
Ungraspable: Depictions of Home in African-American Literature”
DR. TRUDIER HARRIS
Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and J. Carlyle Sitterson Distinguished Professor of English Emerita at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Thursday, March 29, 2018
3rd Annual Ruthe T. Sheffey Lecture
“Me, Too, Zora Neale Hurston: Creating a Female Space”
DR. DARYL LYNN DANCE
Visiting Assistant Professor of African-American Rhetoric and Literature, Pedagogy of Writing, and Service Learning at Marquette University
Thursday, March 28, 2019
4th Annual Ruthe T. Sheffey Lecture
“The Afropolitan Mystique in the Plays of Ngozi Anyanwu, Jocelyn Bioh, Dana Gurira, and Mfuniso Odofia”
DR. SANDRA G. SHANNON
Professor of African-American Literature Emerita at Howard University
Thursday, March 28, 2021
5th Annual Ruthe T. Sheffey Lecture
“G’on with Your Ba-ad Self, Girl: Sassy Black Women”
DR. DARYL CUMBER DANCE Professor Emerita, University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University
Thursday, March 31, 2022
6th Annual Ruthe T. Sheffey Lecture
“In Search of My Mother’s Garden: Gwendolyn Brooks and Other Literary Mothers”
DR. JOANNE VEAL GABBIN, ‘67
Executive Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and Professor of English at James Madison University
Dr. Lora F. Hargrove, a native of Baltimore, MD, began her career as an innercity elementary school teacher in Baltimore. Later, she worked in a communications capacity for a foreign policy firm, Ross-Robinson and Associates, serving as the liaison to the United States Congress. In 1995, Dr. Hargrove accepted her call to preach. She preached her initial sermon at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore in the same year.
Dr. Hargrove received a bachelor’s degree in Communications with an emphasis in public relations from Howard University. To be well equipped for the ministry, Dr. Hargrove entered the Master of Divinity Program at Wesley Theological Seminary in 1996. Graduating with honors upon completion of her Master of Divinity Degree (concentration: ethics and public policy) in 1999, she was selected by the faculty to receive the Proficiency in Biblical Preaching Award.
In May 2009, Dr. Hargrove earned her doctorate in Homiletics at Wesley Theological Seminary. Her doctoral thesis was entitled, “The Effects of Racism and Sexism on African American Women Preachers and Their Ability to Use Their Struggle to Empower Successive Generations of Emerging Preachers to Find Their Voice in Preaching.”
In 2003, BETAH Associates, Inc., engaged Dr. Hargrove as Director of Faith-based Outreach for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of HIV/AIDS Policy’s Leadership Campaign on AIDS. In this capacity, she developed and implemented a comprehensive outreach plan targeting faith leaders, churches and faithbased organizations nationwide. She was instrumental in forming and expanding collaborative relationships with The Balm in Gilead, Sisters Together and Reaching, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Salvation Army, and many local and regional organizations.
Dr. Hargrove’s homiletical work has been used in prophetic preaching classes at Howard University School of Divinity and Virginia Theological Seminary. In addition, she has worked with Columbia University’s Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice (CARSS), which advances research, education and public engagement at the nexus of religion, race and sexuality.
Dr. Hargrove served as elected Assistant Pastor and then long-term Interim Pastor of a prominent Black church in Montgomery County, MD, for nearly two decades. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in African Diaspora History at the esteemed Howard University. In 2020, Dr. Hargrove stepped out of the pastoral spotlight to use her gifts and talents more broadly and birthed Bokassi Ventures, LLC. Bokassi is a Central
African term that means unique energy or presence. She is the embodiment, face and voice of Bokassi, as she shares her relational wellness techniques consulting in the areas of culture, education, health and spirituality. Dr. Hargrove is also the sound of Bokassi, engaging in voice artistry for voiceover spots for national and global brands, including Microsoft, Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation, Liam Labs and ColleMcVoy, to name a few. In addition, Dr. Hargrove’s voice of wisdom is sought out in varied spaces to bring inspiration and hope to organizations and individuals alike. She has been a featured speaker for the U.S. House of Representatives, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the late Congressman Elijah Cummings, Congressman David Trone, Governor Wes Moore’s campaign, the Southern Area Links, Inc., and the National Council of Negro Women (Montgomery County, MD).
Dr. Hargrove empowers others to step into their own unique energy and presence to embrace their Bokassi.
Seventh Annual
Presiding
Dr. Ida Jones, Associate Director of Special Collections and Archivist
Earl S. Richardson Library
Welcome ............................................................................................................. Dr. Ida Jones
Anthem ......................................................................................... “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”
Led by Ms. Jailah Wehye, Soprano, Morgan State University Choir Dr. Eric Conway, Conductor
Greetings .....................................................................................
Dr. David Kwabena Wilson President Dr. Jules White
Acting Chairperson, Department of English and Language Arts
Dr. Adele Newson-Horst Director, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program
Introduction of Benefactor ................................................................................. Dr. Ida Jones
Occasion ......................................................................................... Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey, ’47 Professor of English Emerita
Introduction of Speaker ..................................................................................... Dr. Ida Jones
Ruthe T. Sheffey Lecture in African-American Female Studies ................ Dr. Lora Hargrove Scholar, Vocalist and Navigational Coach Founder and CEO of Bokassi Ventures, LLC
“It Is Well with My Soul: Black Women, Culture and Spirituality”
Dialogue with the Audience ................................................................... Led by Dr. Ida Jones
Alma Mater ........................................................................ Led by Ms. Jailah Wehye, Soprano Morgan State University Choir
Closing Remarks ........................................................................................................................
In 2017, on the recommendation of the Sesquicentennial Celebration Coordinating Committee, President David Wilson appointed Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey as Poet Laureate of the Sesquicentennial Celebration and charged her with writing the Sesquicentennial Poem for Morgan’s 150th Anniversary Celebration.
Dr. Sheffey, Professor of English Emerita, is a 1947 graduate of Morgan State College and holds the record for being the longest-continuously-serving faculty member in the history of Morgan. She began teaching at Morgan in 1949 and retired in 2011, after sixty-two years of outstanding service. For several years, she was chair of the Department of English and, during that period, led the department in the revision of the Humanities courses to include a multicultural, global perspective.
Dr. Sheffey is the founder of the Zora Neale Hurston Society and the founding editor of the Zora Neale Hurston Forum, which was published at Morgan from 1986 to 2010.
She read the Sesquicentennial Poem at the December 2017 Commencement, which was the closing ceremony for the Sesquicentennial Celebration
Ihave utilized the rigor of the sonnet structure which encourages a poetic discipline worthy of celebrating Morgan State University’s one hundred fifty years’ arduous and illustrious journey. The three elements of our theme purpose, progress and promise are challenging meditations on the visions of those under whom I studied and served Presidents Holmes, Jenkins, Cheek, Billingsley, Richardson, and Wilson. Please view these stanzas as a modern riff, not only on past glories but on victories yet to come. Finally, the sonnet’s iambic pentameter form appropriately hymns Morgan State University’s meteoric rise to becoming declared a Carnegie-classified Research Institution and a National Treasure.
A time came when God set the captives free. When the dark night of ignorance had prevailed, The Methodists trained nine youths for the Ministry Who in God’s work of winning souls travailed.
Although the Jenkins’ goals held everywhere That what one thought, or wrote, or spoke was clear, These best and brightest students always knew That what each aspirant spoke was true.
In 1921 a new stone entrance proclaimed That the love, the joy of small and great Will always be at large acclaimed Of all who passed within this gate.
One-fifty years later in five stages created Morgan’s purpose, its progress, its promise validated.
In “Ole Baltimore” where Countee Cullen walked, Where Morgan tried in vain to stretch its stone and brick sinews, Where later in those same streets Freddie Gray was stalked, The 70’s forces of retreat came sadly into view.
With courage resisting both despair and defeat And valiantly always maintaining high worth And bravely resolving to never retreat, Morgan gave a true University birth.
All were urged to think of courage personally, The courage to stand and let oneself be heard, When all around you stand silently as trees. When only the bravest Morganite was heard.
In later years, new self-empowered, human skin Made space for a great University to begin.
For over 150 years you have walked this Morgan mile, Over 150 dreams held like fragile eggshells in your hands. Worn as shawls your moonlight and your sunrise, through your tears and through your smiles, You’ll bring them back as polished jewels to grace this hallowed land.
Sustained by your leaders, your teachers, your peers, Restrained by no inner fears of low worth You are the purpose, the progress, the promise of our future years And you are the hope to bring new glories to birth.
Taught respect for opponents amid deepest discord A compassionate discourse to seek, You are the hope as new rivers we ford And Morgan’s high standards we keep.
You were our promise from the very first start, Not only written on paper but etched on our hearts.
For this strong man the journey does not end The path, like Paul’s, found him an advocate. He saw a challenge there, where the road bends.
Equity and parity in funding found a friend
In speaking truth to power, stern, articulate. For this wise man the journey does not end.
Like Odysseus, breasting Aegean seas, or Douglass, contending with the Chesapeake’s winds. His vision was to build and renovate. He loved the victories, there where the road bends.
A greater joy, distinguished graduates, the school’s life blood to send Out, in twenty-five years seems much too short a date. For this just man the journey does not end.
A tireless leader whom even foes commend, New programs, structures, once done, more to anticipate He raised a monument there, where the road bends.
Firm on the threshing ground, where truth and honor blend
A happy warrior clad in helmet, armor, and breastplate For this brave man, the journey does not end. He seizes a new mission there, where the road bends.
Ruthe T. Sheffey, Ph.D. Professor of English Presented at the Faculty Institute Morgan State UniversityAugust 12, 2009
On Thursday, June 17, 2010, over two hundred guests gathered in the Communications Center for the official dedication of the Ruthe T. Sheffey Lecture Hall. The guests included her colleagues from the Department of English and Language Arts and from other departments and schools at the University; members of the Morgan administration; Dr. Sheffey’s former and current students; the pastor and members of her church congregation; friends from the community; and a number of members of her family. The event was a fitting tribute to one of Morgan’s finest graduates and one of its finest and most distinguished professors, one who, in her professional lifetime, became a Morgan Legend. According to then-Dean Burney J. Hollis, who presided at the dedication, the ceremony raised Dr. Sheffey from synonym to eponym for academic excellence at Morgan over her sixty years (by 2010).
Ms. Stacey Benn
Executive Administrative Assistant to Chief of Staff, Finance and Management
Dr. Burney J. Hollis, Coordinator
Professor of English Emeritus and Dean Emeritus, College of Liberal Arts
Member, MSU Board of Regents
Ms. Donna J. Howard
Retired Vice President for Institutional Advancement and Retired Executive Director of the Morgan State University Foundation
Dr. Edwin T. Johnson
Special Assistant to the Provost and University Historian
Dr. Ruthe T. Sheffey
Professor of English Emerita
Ms. Tara Turner
Interim Vice President for Institutional Advancement and Executive Director of the Morgan State University Foundation
Dr. J. A. White
Associate Professor and Acting Chair, Department of English and Language Arts
RUTHE T. SHEFFEY L ECTURE IN A FRICAN-A MERICAN F EMALE S TUDIES