{"id":22414,"date":"2021-06-16T15:14:26","date_gmt":"2021-06-16T19:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/?p=22414"},"modified":"2021-06-23T14:12:20","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T18:12:20","slug":"black-historian-to-join-marshall-as-visiting-diversity-scholar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/2021\/06\/black-historian-to-join-marshall-as-visiting-diversity-scholar\/","title":{"rendered":"Historian appointed Visiting Diversity Scholar"},"content":{"rendered":"
Marshall University will welcome Dr. Cicero Fain III as a new Visiting Diversity Scholar beginning Aug. 2. He will teach one our two courses per semester on African American history and culture, work on a diversity-related project and develop a scholarship opportunity to attract students from underrepresented groups to Marshall, among several other efforts, while coordinating activities with the President\u2019s Commission on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, as well as the Dr. Carter G. Woodson Lyceum and The John Deaver Drinko Academy.<\/p>\n

Fain, who will be coming back to Marshall for the position after working here previously, is currently a professor of history at the College of Southern Maryland.\u00a0 In 2019, the University of Illinois Press published his book, Black Huntington: An Appalachian Story<\/em>, depicting the African American experience in Huntington from the post-Civil War era through the early part of the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century.<\/p>\n

Huntington\u2019s location on the Ohio River, bordering both Ohio and Kentucky, gave its Black residents an interesting historic perspective because the city is just over the line from a slave state and just far enough away from communities that were far more restrictive to their African American residents.\u00a0They had unique circumstances in Huntington and used the autonomy they had to move forward, Fain said. He describes that growth as \u201cemblematic\u201d of the American story. They started with nothing and began to build.<\/p>\n

His joining Marshall is among the university\u2019s many efforts to celebrate diversity on campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince coming to Marshall in 2016, one of my highest priorities has been to create an open and diverse campus,\u201d said Dr. Jerome A. \u201cJerry\u201d Gilbert, president of Marshall. \u201cWelcoming Dr. Fain back to Marshall as a visiting diversity scholar is another step in the important process of creating a culture that enhances our student experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fain said he remembers sitting on the front porch in Huntington and hearing people talk about the city, which planted a seed of interest and appreciation for African Americans\u2019 contributions to the community.\u00a0He spent eight years researching Huntington\u2019s African American history, including his time at the Ohio State University, where he earned his master\u2019s and then his doctoral degree. He conducted personal interviews, and researched court and church documents, school yearbooks, newspaper archives, personal diaries and family histories.<\/p>\n

His book discusses Huntington\u2019s rapidly growing economy and relatively tolerant racial climate, which drew African Americans from across Appalachia and the South to the city. It discusses their relative prosperity and political clout, which they used to confront institutionalized and industrial racism as well as the white embrace of Jim Crow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a story worthy of being told,\u201d Fain said upon the book\u2019s release.<\/p>\n

Ronald D. Eller, author of\u00a0Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945<\/em>, reviewed Fain\u2019s book, saying, \u201cThis book not only broadens our understanding of the process of modernization in Appalachia by bringing Black Appalachians onto the historical stage, it also casts light on the experience of development in Appalachia\u2019s urban places and demonstrates how an essentially rural people shaped their own meaningful communities in a new environment of both opportunity and repression.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fain has been on the faculty at the College of Southern Maryland since 2011, previously working as a visiting assistant professor at Niagara University in New York; assistant professor at Ohio University, Southern Campus, in Ironton, Ohio, and an assistant professor at Marshall.<\/p>\n

To learn more about Fain\u2019s book, Black Huntington: An Appalachian Story<\/em>, visit\u00a0www.press.uillinois.edu\/books\/catalog\/89rgn5gn9780252042591.html<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marshall University will welcome Dr. Cicero Fain III as a new Visiting Diversity Scholar beginning Aug. 2. He will teach one our two courses per semester on African American history and culture, work on a diversity-related project and develop a scholarship opportunity to attract students from underrepresented groups to Marshall, among several other efforts, while coordinating activities with the President\u2019s Commission on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, as well as the Dr. Carter G. Woodson Lyceum and The John Deaver Drinko Academy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":22415,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-news-releases"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22414"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22493,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22414\/revisions\/22493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}