Clark Atlanta University (CAU) will celebrate its 2013 Founders Day with an address by renowned educator, CAU trustee and alumna Delores Aldridge, Ph.D., on Thursday, March 21.
“Celebrating Our Legacy: A Past to Cherish; A Future to Fulfill” is the theme for Founders Day, which will kick off the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the university. In 1988, CAU was formed from the consolidation of two prestigious and historic institutions, Atlanta University, the nation’s first African-American graduate school, founded in 1865, and Clark College, the nation’s first private, liberal arts college for African Americans, founded in 1869.
CAU President Carlton E. Brown said, “We are grateful to have become today the product of one of the most important consolidations in the history of higher education. Our legacy has shaped American history, and we owe a great debt to the visionaries before us. It is wealth beyond measure to have Dr. Aldridge, an alumna who also has served as a trustee since the consolidation, share her perspective and experience on this occasion.”
Aldridge, who holds the bachelor’s degree in sociology and the master’s degree in social work from CAU, serves as the secretary of the University’s board of trustees and has distinguished herself throughout her career. She was the first African-American woman to receive the doctorate degree in sociology from Purdue University in 1971. That same year, she became the first African-American female faculty member at Emory University, simultaneously becoming the founding director of the first degree-granting Black Studies program in the South. Aldridge administered this program until 1990 when she was named the Grace Towns Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Emory, one of the few African- Americans to hold a distinguished chair at a major institution at that time.
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