Francine Childs: Life and Contributions at Ohio University & Beyond, 1974-2023

Academic Engagement

Student-centered Leadership 

Dr. Childs engaged the larger university community in her work over almost 50 years at Ohio University. As she explained, “I also became involved in the larger university community as the current faculties in the Black Studies Institute were not.” A hallmark of this engagement was her commitment to all students at Ohio University. An early location of this commitment was in the refocusing of the Lindley Student Center. 
I came in 1974 … We had already started the Black Student Union. When I was the advisor to the Black Student Union, we felt that we should have a place. It had been called the Lindley Student Center, but we changed the name to Lindley Cultural Center. In the beginning, there was just a pool table and a TV. When I became chair, I wanted it to be more than just a pool hall. So we wrote a proposal, and we got new furniture in there. We got a bigger TV. We started having different events there. For example, that’s where they had all of the dances.”  
In its heyday, the Lindley Student Center was the center for Black life on the campus. In time the name would be changed to the Multicultural Center. Also associated with aspects of her leadership was the formation of the choral group the Gospel Voices of Faith. 

The Gospel Voices of Faith (GVF) was established in 1975. As a founding member, Rev. Dr. Jack Sullivan, Jr has noted that the GVF reflected Dr. Childs’s spirituality and her pedagogy. Commenting on that experience, Dr. Childs stated: 
I gained the respect and admiration of the students, assisted them in organizing the Gospel Voices of Faith. This group quickly became a nationally known group. My mentor Dr. John Hurst Adams a Bishop in the AME Church helped set up concerts in churches in various cities across the country which included: St. Louis, MO; Tulsa, OK; Oklahoma City, OK; Memphis, TN; Little Rock, AK; and Dallas, Waco, Austin, McKinney & Corpus Christi, TX. Louisville, KY; Kansas City, MO. These singing tours served as a means of recruiting for the university and professional networking opportunities for members of the choir.


Faculty Leadership 

By 1977, three years into her joining Ohio University, Dr. Childs had become the president of the Black Faculty Administrative Caucus.” 

Teaching


Over the course of her career at Ohio University, Dr. Childs developed a range of influential courses in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum. These ranged from introductory courses to community-based, service-learning courses. As she noted: 
I taught The Black Family, Introduction to African American Education, Techniques of Teaching in Inner-City Schools, The Black Child, and a psychology course titled “Afro-American Personality,” and the [Tier III] Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. non-violence course. These are courses that I developed. Because of my educational background, I sometimes lectured in the College of Education. Additionally, I had supervised student teachers before coming to OU. 
Other courses included Youth and Family life, kids in the community.

I had an Imani program with graduate students from communications and graduate students from the College of Education. 

The CAAS Newsletter for Fall 1985 reported: 

"Last summer, a new involve-the-community program was born at the Center for Afro-American Studies, Ohio University. The program aimed at a constructive engagement of youth spending the summer in and around Ohio University and Athens."  

Dr. Childs’ teaching was enriched by her national and international travel. She was in Kenya on a research project the day after the bombing of the U.S Embassy in Tanzania. She also visited India and Kenya. 

Her courses were popular and earned her academic accolades. 

Service to the Field of Black Studies 

One of the challenges associated with the development of the field of Black Studies in the American academy was earning academic respect. Like at other universities, at Ohio University there was constant “push back” from the other faculty. There were criticisms about the scope and rigor of the field. A survey of this experience is available in Fabio Rojas’ 2007 publication, From Black Power to Black Studies. How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline.  

In this national struggle, Dr. Francine Childs was one of the early leaders of the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS). This organization was established in 1975 “by African American scholars who recognized the need to formalize the study of the African World experience, as well as expand and strengthen academic units and community programs devoted to this endeavor.” 

The NCBS has been recognized as serving as “a national stabilizing force in the developing discipline of Africana/Black Studies.” A discipline committed to “holistic and multidisciplinary approaches and committed to academic excellence and social responsibility.” 

As a leader of this movement, Dr. Child was able to bring leaders of the NCBS to visit Ohio University regularly to take part in the several symposia, colloquia, and special events she organized. It was through these programs that students and faculty at OHIO were exposed to influential scholars such as Professors Niam Akbar, Mellonie Burnim, and Portia Maultsby. 

 

Dr. Childs was also influential in the creation of the Ohio Consortium of Black Studies. As she recalled in 2012:
 

This group of people included Edward Crosby from Kent State, Nick Nelson from Ohio State, the chair at UC Cincinnati, and Yvonne Williams from the College of Wooster. They came to OU on a number of occasions. We wanted to set up a network where we could cross-teach courses and have students at other campuses taking our courses. For example, you could be teaching a class there; Vattel could be teaching a class here; and students at Kent State could interact—they could simultaneously be taking a course. 


Professional Achievements 

Dr. Childs’ almost 50-year career at Ohio University, was filled with achievements, recognitions, and awards. She received tenure in 1977 and in 1979 she became the first Black tenured full professor. 

In 1985, Dr. Childs was appointed by the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences to become the first woman Chair of the Department of African American Studies. As she recalled during the 2012 interview with Chunnu and Boyce:
I became chair in 1985, this was probably due to the enormous amount of work I did as acting chair during the summer when the chair was attending a summer institute. I had developed brochures of the courses for the year and written a proposal that was funded. I met with all of the colleges to see how African American Studies courses could meet the needs of their students. 
By 1986, the Department of African American Studies was an active interdisciplinary hub with an international perspective on the Black experience. The small core faculty (Francine Childs, Vattel Rose, and Robert Rhodes) were augmented by professors from other colleges, including Maisha Hazzard from the School of Telecommunications and Cosmo Pieterse from the Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences. The Department of African American Studies and its Lindley Cultural Center were key intellectual hubs, gathering places for global African undergraduate and graduate students. These were also spaces where there was resistance to the anti-Black Studies tendencies evident in the local and national scene.  

As chair of the Department’s curriculum committee from 1974-1996, director of summer programs from 1975 to 1978, and as chair of the department from 1984-1989 Dr. Childs was responsible for developing and establishing the framework that has undergirded the department’s current curriculum and community-based praxis. This attracted attention of the university’s academic leaders: 
My educational background, training and experience put me in a different position, as did my having been a Dean of Women and Dean of Students. When I became chair, I organized the graduate students and the undergraduate students. We did a newsletter, and I took it over to the journalism department. It had pictures, listings of our courses, and a list of all the people in the department. The dean in the College of Communications [Dr. Paul Nelson] begged me to come under him. He said, “Francine, oh, we could do great things.” But we agreed that, based upon the fact that most of our courses were social science, that Arts and Sciences was the right fit.  
Due to a health challenge, Dr. Childs stood down as Chair of African American Studies in 1989. 

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As an Ohio University faculty member, Dr. Childs was the recipient of several influential awards and recognitions. Sauti of February 6, 1986, noted that she had won several awards for being an outstanding professor at Ohio University, including the prestigious University Professor award, twice. University Professors are nominated and selected by Ohio University students. Among her awards and recognitions were:  

 

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Setting the Scene
  3. Early Life & Career
  4. Academic Engagement
  5. Community Service & Practice
  6. Impact and Legacy
  7. Acknowledgements
  8. References

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