Henderson, George 1932–

PERSONAL: Born June 18, 1932, in Hurtsboro, AL; son of Kidd Large Henderson and Lula Mae (Crawford) Fisher; married Barbara Beard, August 9, 1952; children: George Jr., Michele, Faith Henderson Mosley, Lea Henderson Murr, Joy Henderson Baldwin, Lisa, Dawn Henderson Johnson. Ethnicity: "African American." Education: Attended Michigan State University, 1950–52; Wayne State University, B.A., 1957, M.A., 1959, Ph.D., 1965. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Baptist. Hobbies and other interests: Reading, sports, travel.

ADDRESSES: Home—2616 Osborne Dr., Norman, OK 73069. Office—College of Liberal Studies, University of Oklahoma, 1700 Asp Ave., Ste. 226, Norman, OK 73072-6400; fax: 405-325-34402. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Church Youth Services, Detroit, MI, social caseworker, 1957–59; Detroit Housing Commission, Detroit, social economist, 1960–61; Detroit Urban League, Detroit, community services director, 1961–63; Community Action for Detroit Youth, Detroit, program director, 1963–64; Wayne State University, Detroit, assistant director of Delinquency Control Training Center, 1964–65; Detroit Public Schools, Detroit, assistant director of intercultural relations, 1965–66, assistant to superintendent of schools, 1966–67; University of Oklahoma, Norman, associate professor of sociology and education, 1967–69, professor of human relations and education, beginning 1969, also S.N. Goldman Professor of Human Relations, David Ross Boyd Professor, and Regents' Professor, dean of College of Liberal Studies, 1996–2000. Harper Hospital School of Nursing, instructor, 1965–67; Langston University, visiting professor, 1969–70; U.S. Air Force Academy, distinguished visiting professor, 1980–81; Fayetteville State University, distinguished lecturer, 1999; also lecturer at Wayne State University and University of Michigan. Board member, Southwest Center for Human Relations, Friends of the Oklahoma Museum of Higher Education, Oklahoma Center for the Book, and National Conference for Community and Justice.

MEMBER: American Sociological Association, Association of Black Sociologists, American Association of University Professors, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, American Association for Higher Education, Alpha Kappa Delta, Omicron Delta Kappa, Delta Tau Kappa, Golden Key National Honor Society, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Alpha Psi.

AWARDS, HONORS: George Washington Medal, Freedoms Foundation, 1962; Action in Education Award, Better Homes and Gardens, 1962; Education Award, Prince Hall Free and Accepted Masons of Michigan, 1966; grant, American Federation of Teachers, 1969; Outstanding Achievement Award, Human Relations Association, 1975; Outstanding Book Award, President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped, 1985; Trail Blazer Award, Oklahoma Alliance for Affirmative Action, 1988; Human Rights Award, Oklahoma Human Rights Commission, 1989, 1993; Excellence Award, Oklahoma Black Public Administrators, 1990; Professional Support Award, U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, 1990; Black Caucus Educational Service Award, American Association for Higher Education, 1993; Outstanding Services to Children and Young Adults Award, Florida Association on Children under Six, 1993; Outstanding Educational Contribution, Sheriffs' Association of Texas, 1996; C.V. Ramana Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Mental Health of Oklahoma Children, 1996; certificates of merit, Texas Justice Court Training Center and Oklahoma Regional Community Policing Institute, both 1998; named multicultural citizen of the year, Multicultural Education Institute of Oklahoma, 1999; University of Oklahoma, George Henderson Teaching Award established, 2000, Henderson Scholars Program established, 2001; Black Heritage Lifetime Achievement Award, State of Oklahoma, 2003; inducted into Oklahoma Hall of fame and Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame, 2003; also received numerous civilian awards for work with U.S. armed forces.

WRITINGS:

Training Is Being Trained (monograph), Delinquency Control Center, Wayne State University (Detroit, MI), 1964.

(With Robert F. Bibens) Teachers Should Care, Harper (New York, NY), 1970.

(With William B. Raglan) Foundations of American Education, Harper (New York, NY), 1970.

To Live in Freedom: Human Relations Today and Tomorrow, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1972.

The National Assessment and Rural Education (monograph), Educational Resource Information Center/Clearinghouse on Rural Schools (Kansas City, MO), 1973.

Human Relations: From Theory to Practice, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1974.

A Religious Foundation of Human Relations: Beyond Games, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1977.

Introduction to American Education: A Human Relations Approach, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1978.

(With Martha Primeaux) Transcultural Health Care, Addison-Wesley (Menlo Park, CA), 1981.

The Human Rights of Professional Helpers, Charles C Thomas (Springfield, IL), 1983.

(With wife, Barbara B. Henderson) Mending Broken Children: A Parent's Manual, Charles C Thomas (Springfield, IL), 1984.

(With Willie Bryan) Psychosocial Aspects of Disability, Charles C Thomas (Springfield, IL), 1984, 3rd edition, 2004.

(With Jerome Weber) College Survival for Student-Athletes, Charles C Thomas (Springfield, IL), 1985.

America's Ethnic Groups (audiocassettes), Tutor/Tape, 1986.

(With Virginia Milhouse) International Business and Cultures, Cummings & Hathaway (New York, NY), 1987.

A Practitioner's Guide to Understanding Indigenous and Foreign Cultures, Charles C Thomas (Springfield, IL), 1989, revised edition (with Dorscine Spigner-Littles and Virginia Hall Milhouse) published as A Practitioner's Guide to Understanding Indigenous and Foreign Cultures: An Analysis of Relationships between Ethnicity, Social Class, and Therapeutic Intervention Strategies, 2006.

(With John Bruhn) Values in Health Care: Choices and Conflicts, Charles C Thomas (Springfield, IL), 1991.

Social Work Interventions: Helping People of Color, Begin & Garvey (Westport, CT), 1994.

Cultural Diversity in the Workplace: Issues and Strategies, Quorum (Westport, CT), 1994.

(With Thompson Olasiji) Migrants, Immigrants, and Slaves: Racial and Ethnic Groups in America, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1995.

Human Relations Issues in Management, Quorum Books (Westport, CT), 1996.

Our Souls to Keep: Black/White Relations in America, Intercultural Press (Yarmouth, ME), 1999.

Contributor to books, including All Men Are Created Equal, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 1966; Readings in Social Problems, Allyn & Bacon (New York, NY), 1967; Guidance for Urban Disadvantaged Youth, American Personnel and Guidance Association (New York, NY), 1971; Doorways to Diversity, Consortium for Urban Teacher, Education Teacher Corps (Norman, OK), 1979; and Teacher Education Yearbook I: Diversity, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1993. Contributor to periodicals, including Negro Digest, Phylon, Teachers College Journal, National Elementary Principal, and College Student Journal.

EDITOR

America's Other Children: Public Schools outside Suburbia, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1971.

Education for Peace: Focus on Mankind, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (Washington, DC), 1973.

Human Relations in the Military: Problems and Programs, Nelson-Hall (Chicago, IL), 1975.

Understanding and Counseling Ethnic Minorities, Charles C Thomas (Springfield, IL), 1979.

Physician-Patient Communication, Charles C Thomas (Springfield, IL), 1981.

Police Human Relations, Charles C Thomas (Springfield, IL), 1981.

The State of Black Oklahoma, Urban League of Oklahoma City (Oklahoma City, OK), 1983.

(With Grace Xueqin Ma) Rethinking Ethnicity and Health Care: A Sociocultural Perspective, Charles C Thomas (Springfield, IL), 1999.

(With Grace Xueqin Ma) Ethnicity and Substance Abuse: Prevention and Intervention, Charles C Thomas (Springfield, IL), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: George Henderson once told CA: "'We wear the mask that grins and lies.' Thus did Paul Laurence Dunbar, famous black poet, begin his poem 'We Wear the Mask.' I learned the poem in elementary school and the words stayed with me. I vowed when I was ten or eleven years of age that I would not grin and lie my way through life. Nor would I encourage other persons to do so. If grinning and lying was what it took to be a successful Negro, I concluded, then I was prepared to be a failure. Even so, I desperately wanted to help 'my people' to triumph over 'white folks.' Yes, you could say that I was a black bigot—created, nurtured, and raised in a nation of racial segregation and appalling pockets of abject poverty.

"Fortunately, my mother, Lula Mae, and a few humane teachers and peers taught me to love and respect myself and people of other cultures. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Whitney M. Young, Jr. greatly influenced my philosophy of life. Slowly, my bigotry gave way to humanistic principles that have become a vital fiber of my being. Long before earning a doctorate in educational sociology, I was a bona fide human rights activist. My philosophical die was cast; I was committed to freeing oppressed people, especially ethnic minorities, the poor, and women of all ethnic groups.

"It is necessary that you have the brief preceding biographical data in order to put my writings in clear focus. When you understand my socialization, you are better able to understand why I write what I write. In many ways, I am a social dinosaur—clinging tenaciously to the concepts of cultural pluralism and racial desegregation. I believe that all cultures should be preserved and enriched; and I also believe that this is best done in a desegregated society where the various cultures can learn from each other.

"Acceptance, respect, trust, responsibility, and nonviolence are dominant themes in all of my books. The intensity of my quest to combine scholarly research with humane foundations is also evident in my publications. I am a compulsive writer—driven by unpleasant memories of racial segregation, hatred, and needless violence. Furthermore, I am hooked on teaching—a hopeless pedagogical addict, unable to get my fill of classroom interactions. I love teaching. However, without the understanding and support of my wife, Barbara, and our seven children, I would not have endured. Thanks to my family, I now ponder with considerably less cynicism Robert Hayden's poem 'Frederick Douglass.' Like Frederick Douglass, I have been trying to write, to teach, to live—freedom. Also like Douglass, I have tried to do it with dignity."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Bookwatch, January, 1999, review of Our Souls to Keep: Black/White Relations in America, p. 2; March, 1999, review of Our Souls to Keep, p. 9.

Choice, January, 1972, review of America's Other Children: Public Schools outside Suburbia, p. 1494; February, 1973, review of America's Other Children, p. 1557; January, 1978, review of A Religious Foundation of Human Relations: Beyond Games, p. 1517; September, 1981, review of Transcultural Health Care, p. 118; November, 1981, review of Physician-Patient Communication, p. 405; April, 1985, review of Psychosocial Aspects of Disability, p. 1195; September, 1990, review of A Practitioner's Guide to Understanding Indigenous and Foreign Cultures, p. 156; January, 1995, F.J. Peirce, review of Social Work Interventions: Helping People of Color, p. 878; April, 1995, L.M.C. Abbot, review of Cultural Diversity in the Workplace: Issues and Strategies, p. 1378; July-August, 1996, C. Tausky, review of Human Relations Issues in Management, p. 1836.

Curriculum Review, February, 1979, review of Education for Peace: Focus on Mankind, p. 67.

Families in Society: Journal of Contemporary Human Services, April-June, 2003, W. Patrick Sullivan, review of Ethnicity and Substance Abuse: Prevention and Intervention, p. 299.

History: Review of New Books, spring, 1996, review of Migrants, Immigrants, and Slaves: Racial and Ethnic Groups in America, p. 114.

Instructor, June, 1973, review of Education for Peace, p. 62.

JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, May 19, 1993, Benjamin S. Wilfond, review of Values in Health Care: Choices and Conflicts, p. 2559.

Journal of Negro Education, fall, 1979, review of Introduction to American Education: A Human Relations Approach, p. 552.

Journal of Palliative Care, spring, 1993, review of Values in Health Care, pp. 58-59.

Journal of Rehabilitation, October, 1997, review of Psychosocial Aspects of Disability, p. 497.

Library Journal, September 1, 1971, review of America's Other Children, p. 2635; May 15, 1972, review of America's Other Children, p. 1882; November 1, 1998, review of Our Souls to Keep, p. 104; December, 1998, Deborah Bigelow, review of Our Souls to Keep, p. 139.

Personnel and Guidance Journal, May, 1976, review of Human Relations in the Military: Problems and Programs, p. 457.

Personnel Psychology, winter, 1995, review of Cultural Diversity in the Workplace, p. 967.

Public Health Reports, September, 2000, Jean Lau Chin, review of Rethinking Ethnicity and Health Care: A Sociocultural Perspective, p. 485.

Publishers Weekly, November 9, 1998, review of Our Souls to Keep, p. 68.

Reference and Research Book News, July, 1996, review of Human Relations Issues in Management, p. 32.

SciTech Book News, December, 2004, review of Psychosocial Aspects of Disability, p. 109.

Security Management, July, 1995, Edward J. Carroll, review of Cultural Diversity in the Workplace, p. 164.

Social Casework: Journal of Contemporary Social Work, September, 1980, review of Understanding and Counseling Ethnic Minorities, p. 441.

Social Education, May, 1980, review of Introduction to American Education, p. 416.

Social Service Review, September, 1996, review of Social Work Interventions, p. 500.

Social Work, May, 1991, Leon F. Williams, review of A Practitioner's Guide to Understanding Indigenous and Foreign Cultures, p. 269.

Time, September, 1996, review of Social Work Interventions, p. 426.