Raymond Winbush facts for kids

Raymond Arnold Winbush, also known as Tikari Bioko, was born on March 31, 1948. He is an American scholar and activist. He is known for his ideas about how racism affects people of African descent around the world. He currently works as a professor and director at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Raymond Winbush's Journey

His Early Life and Education

Raymond Winbush was one of five children. He was the middle of three sons. His father, Harold Winbush, worked in a steel factory in Cleveland, Ohio. His mother, Dorothy Winbush, was a housewife.

In 1948, when Raymond was born, his family faced money problems. This was due to a tough economy, low pay, and unfair treatment because of their race. So, they left Pittsburgh and moved to Cleveland, Ohio, to start fresh.

When Raymond was in elementary school, his art teacher suggested he take a special test. He scored very high on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test, which measures how smart someone is. This changed his life.

He was then bussed from his poor neighborhood to a special school. This school was in a middle-class area, mostly Jewish, about seven miles from his home. By age twelve, Raymond noticed big differences in his education compared to his brothers. He wrote about his early life in his first book, The Warrior Method.

After finishing John Adams High School in Cleveland in 1966, Raymond went to Oakwood College. This college is now called Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama. There, he won special scholarships from the Ford Foundation. These allowed him to study at Harvard and Yale universities in 1968 and 1969.

In 1970, Raymond graduated with honors from Oakwood with a degree in psychology. He later taught there and led the Behavioral Sciences department from 1973 to 1977. He earned his master's degree in 1973 and his PhD in clinical psychology in 1976 from the University of Chicago.

His master's study looked at how people from different cultures stand apart from each other in public. His PhD study looked at ideas about how young Black people develop their identity. He showed that some older ideas about this were not correct.

His Career and Research

After teaching at Oakwood University and Alabama A&M University, Raymond Winbush joined Vanderbilt University in 1980. He became an assistant provost and a professor of psychology there. From 1986 to 1989, he was the first director of the Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center at Vanderbilt. He helped look at how many African-American students were joining and staying at the university.

Between 1975 and 2001, Raymond Winbush worked on many projects. These projects aimed to help people understand race relations in America. They also showed how these relations affected Black people's lives. He received money for his work from many groups. These included the National Science Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation.

From 1995 to 2002, he was a professor and director at Fisk University in Nashville, TN. Since 2002, he has been a research professor and director at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2002, he also helped start the Global Afrikan Congress. This is the largest organization for people of African descent around the world.

Raymond Winbush appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2005. He talked about race relations. He has written several books. His book, The Warrior Method: A Program for Rearing Healthy Black Boys, was published in 2001.

Another book, Should America Pay? Slavery and The Raging Debate on Reparations, came out in 2003. This book discusses the idea of reparations. Reparations are payments or actions to make up for past wrongs, like slavery.

His book, Belinda's Petition: A Concise History of Reparations For The Transatlantic Slave Trade, was published in 2009. It explains the history of reparations for the enslavement of Africans. It shows that African people have talked about reparations for over 500 years.

His newest book, The Osiris Papers: Reflections on the Life and Writings of Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, was published in 2020. This book includes discussions by different writers about Dr. Frances Cress Welsing. She was a Black psychiatrist. The book explores her ideas about why racism exists.