Dr. Sherman James

To celebrate, Black History Month, the Hartsville News Journal recognizes noteworthy African Americans with ties to Hartsville and the Pee Dee Region.

Dr. Sherman James is a native of Hartsville. He graduated from Butler High School in 1960, serving as valedictorian of his class and president of the student body.

A social epidemiologist, James is currently the Susan B. King Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at Duke University. He taught at Duke from 2003 to 2014.

Before this, he taught at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (1973-1989), and the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor (1989-2003). He holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and philosophy from Talladega College and a doctorate in social psychology from Washing- ton University.

In the early 1980s, James formulated the John Henryism Hypothesis, which posits that repeated, “high-effort” coping (“John Henryism”) over many years with adversity, including adversity caused by structural racism, contributes to the well-known high risk for hypertension in African Americans. His research on John Henryism has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and on NPR.

In 2000, Dr. James was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2001, he received the Abraham Lilienfeld Award from the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association for career teaching excellence. In 2008, he was the first African American to be elected president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, the largest professional society of epidemiologists in North America. He was also named a Distinguished Alumnus by Washington University in St. Louis. In 2016, he was named the Mahatma Gandhi Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and that same year received the prestigious Wade Hampton Frost Award from the Epidemiology Section of the American Health Association for outstanding contributions to the field of public health.

In 2019, he received the Kenneth Rothman Career Accomplishment Award from the Society for Epidemiologic Research.

As Butler Academy scholars and their teachers made preparations for fun “glow parties” to mark the 100th day of the school year, they challenged themselves to tie their class celebrations to a “can-do” winter food drive to warm the hearts of numerous families in our community

The school-wide goal was to collect 500 cans of food (100 cans per grade) to donate to our local food bank. True to themselves and to the high expectations of their families, members of the BA family collected 1,137 cans.

Accepting the donation on behalf of Hartsville Interfaith Ministries, which operates the food bank, was Exec-

If you have never been to Broadway, put it on your bucket list because it is one of the most spectacular experiences you could ever have. The lights, the music and energy are over the top and unforgettable. Even if the production is a flop, just the experience being there is worth the trip.

In it’s early development, the Dutch called it the Heeren Wegh or Heeren Straat, meaning “Gentlemen’s Way” or “Gentlemen’s Street” –echoing the name of a similar street in Amster-