Charles V. Willie facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Charles V. Willie
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| Born | October 8, 1927 |
| Died | January 11, 2022 (aged 94) |
| Alma mater | Morehouse College Atlanta University Syracuse University |
| Occupation | Professor |
| Spouse(s) | Mary Sue Willie |
| Children | 3 |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Syracuse University State University of New York Upstate Medical University Harvard University |
| Thesis | Socio-economic and ethnic areas of Syracuse, New York. (1957) |
Charles Vert Willie (October 8, 1927 – January 11, 2022) was an American sociologist who was the Charles William Eliot Professor of Education, Emeritus at Harvard University. His areas of research included desegregation, higher education, public health, race relations, urban community problems, and family life. Willie considered himself an applied sociologist, concerned with solving social problems.
Biography
Willie was born October 8, 1927, in Dallas, Texas, the grandson of Louis Willie, a former slave. His father, Louis Willie, was a pullman porter. His mother, Carrie Sykes, was one of the first black women to earn a college degree in Texas, but was unable to teach in the segregated Dallas school system because she was married. She therefore home-schooled her children until they were able to ride in the back of the streetcars to their segregated schools.
He received his B.A. from Morehouse College in 1948 where he was class president, an M.A. from Atlanta University in 1949, and his Ph.D. in sociology from Syracuse University in 1957. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. For many years he resided with his wife Mary Sue Willie in Concord, Massachusetts. He had three children who have careers in government (James Theodore Willie), construction (Martin Charles Willie), and academia (Sarah Susannah Willie-LeBreton).
Willie died at his home in Brighton on January 11, 2022, at the age of 94.
Career
Willie became the first tenured African-American professor at Syracuse University where he taught from 1950 to 1974. He served President John F. Kennedy as the Research Director of Washington Action for Youth, a delinquency-prevention planning program in Washington, D.C. sponsored by the President's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime from 1962–1964. He returned to Syracuse University from 1964–1966. In July 1961 Willie first brought his Morehouse College classmate, Martin Luther King Jr. to speak at Syracuse, and again in July 1965 he introduced King to an audience of 1,000 at major speech at Syracuse University. In 1966–67, he was on leave from Syracuse as a Visiting Lecturer in Sociology at the Harvard Medical School in its Department of Psychiatry as part of the Laboratory of Community Psychiatry. He was chairman of the Department of Sociology and was vice president of student affairs 1972–1974 at Syracuse. At the time he left Syracuse to accept a tenured position as professor of education at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education in 1974.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Willie and nineteen others (from among over 1,000 candidates) to the President's Commission on Mental Health.
Willie was a member of the Board of Directors of the Social Science Research Council. He served as vice president of the American Sociological Association and president (1974–75) of the Eastern Sociological Society.
He also served as a consultant, expert witness, and court-appointed master in major school desegregation cases in various large cities including the landmark case of Boston (1974) from which emerged the "Controlled Choice" plan popularized by Willie and Michael Alves and used in Boston for 10 years and Cambridge for 20 years. Willie did desegregation planning work in Hartford, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Little Rock, Milwaukee, San Jose, Seattle, and St. Louis; and in other municipalities such as St. Lucie County and Lee County, Florida, and Somerville, Cambridge, and Brockton, Massachusetts.
Willie was a lay member of the Episcopal Church in the United States, a former member of its Executive Council and a past vice president of the House of Deputies, one of two houses, with the House of Bishops, that makes up the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Willie was the first African-American elected as Vice-President of the House of Deputies (1970). Although a lay member of this religious association, he was invited to deliver the ordination sermon at an irregular service held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the Church of the Advocate, July 29, 1974 in which the first eleven women were ordained as priests in this denomination. Some members of the Episcopal Church were reluctant to acknowledge the priesthood of women, and the ordination was disputed. Meeting in emergency session in Chicago, the House of Bishops invalidated the ordination by a vote of 128 to 9 because the four officiating bishops had "not fulfilled constitutional and canonical requirements." Willie then resigned August 18, 1974 his elected office of vice-president, in protest at the Bishops' failure to uphold the ordination and accord women equal rights. Ms. magazine designated him a male hero in its tenth anniversary issue (August 1982). He and forty other men were honored for taking courageous action in behalf of women.
Awards and honors
In 2004 Willie received the American Sociological Association's William Foote Whyte Distinguished Career Award; in 2005 he was co-recipient with Charles Tilly of the ASA's W. E. B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award. He had previously received in 1994 the ASA's DuBois-Johnson-Frazier Award. In February 2006 Willie received the Eastern Sociological Society Merit Award, the highest award it can bestow on members.
A number of colleges, universities, and seminaries conferred honorary doctoral degrees upon Willie including Syracuse University, 1992; Haverford College, 2000; Episcopal Divinity School, 2004; Emerson College, 2008, Morgan State University, 2013; and Beacon College, 2019. In June 2000 Syracuse University awarded Willie its George Arents Pioneer Medal, SU's highest alumni honor as well as the Chancellor’s Citation Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.
In 2013 the Eastern Sociological Society established an annual award in Dr. Willie's name to be given to a minority graduate student who demonstrates exceptional scholarly promise, "in recognition of Willie's work on racial and ethnic minorities, his support of minority graduate students, and his invaluable contributions to ESS." In 2021 the Harvard University Graduate School of Education renamed a Doctor of Education Leadership fellowship as the Dr. Charles Willie Fellowship. The fellowship provides an Ed.L.D. student with financial support during their three-year doctoral program.
