Early Life & Career
As a child during the 1940s and 1950s in Wellington, Dr. Childs “pulled” more than her fair share of cotton” and prided herself as a good “cotton puller.”7 She was educated in Texas. She attended Booker T. Washington High School in Wellington. In 1962, she received her bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in health, from Paul Quinn College, a HBCU (Historically Black College and University) in Waco, Texas. In 1970, she received a master’s degree in education counselling from East Texas State University. She would receive her doctoral degree in education supervision, curriculum, and instruction from East Texas State University (now Texas A&M at Commerce).
During an interview with Dr. Winsome Chunnu and Dr. Travis Boyce in 2012, Dr. Childs recalled what it was like when she came to Ohio University for the on-campus interview during the summer of 1974:
The Dean met me at the airport. Upon my arrival at OU, I was really impressed and fell in love with the students who were on the committee, when they met with me. Those who were here during the summer met with me after the interview. I mean, they wined and dined me and just showed me the campus and the community.8In the same interview she expanded on her preparedness for her appointment as an Associate Professor in the Center for Afro-American Studies:
Before I came to OU, I was the dean of students at Wiley College.9
Wiley College, a HBCU, was established eight years after the end of the Civil War.
Upon being hired as the first faculty in the department with a doctoral degree at the rank of Associate Professor, I had some clout that non-terminal degreed individuals with bachelor’s and master’s degrees did not have. I had taught high school biology for five years, worked as a residential counselor, taught at McKinney Job Corps Center and served as the Dean of Students respectively at a historically Black college (Wiley College) in Texas. In addition, as a graduate student, I had worked as co-director of the Continuing Education Office at East Texas State University (now Texas A&M at Commerce) as well as served as a supervisor of student teachers and helped with the new transitional team in the new state teachers education program in the state of Texas. Thus, I was not a novice.10
Dr. Childs’s influencers and mentors included Harry Edwards, and British-Guiana-born Dr. David Albert Talbot. As she recalled in the earlier mentioned 2012 interview:
I took my first graduate class from him [Dr. David Albert Talbot] and got a perfect score on my mid-term exam. He said he thought it was a White student until I held up my hand when he called my name. He was a professor at East Texas State University, now Texas A&M at Commerce. During my tenure as chair of the department, I invited him to be our speaker during Black History Month. He spoke in Galbreath Chapel.11
Between 1974 and her passing in 2023, Dr. Francine Childs would impact Ohio University and the wider community in a range of ways. Let us explore some of these.