Professor Emerita Bette Dickerson catalyzes knowledge into action. After more than 20 years in community-centered philanthropy with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, National Urban League, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.’s Delta Research and Educational Foundation, Dickerson joined AU’s community of changemakers in 1990 eager to translate her experience to academia. She became a campus leader as chair of AU’s sociology department, director of the women’s and gender studies program, faculty advisor for the Alternative Break in South Africa, member of the now Faculty Senate, and chair of the University Diversity Committee.

Throughout her time at AU, Dickerson relished opportunities to learn from her students and pushed them to take their classroom discussions into the community. “I sought to cultivate leadership with students, so they are active citizens when they leave AU,” she says. “My goal was to give them the knowledge, skills, and experiences to be effective leaders in the US and globally.”

Dickerson retired from teaching but soon returned to campus as the interim assistant vice president of campus life. In this role, she served on the Working Group on the Influence of Slavery on American University. The group uncovered the name of Tom King, one of the enslaved people owned by AU’s founder, Bishop John Fletcher Hurst. 

Dickerson memorialized King—and honored those whom the group could not identify—by making a bequest to establish an endowed fund in his name to further the work of AU’s African American and African diaspora studies program. Her future investment will engage students and faculty across disciplines in the history and experience of African Americans and the African diaspora—and help AU tell an important story about its relationship to slavery.

“My work is about remembrance, and we have been systemically denied access to the names of our ancestors,” she says. “When we can say our ancestors’ names, we keep them in our memory.”

For information on how your charitable estate plan can create a legacy as part of American University’s Change Can’t Wait Campaign, contact Seth Speyer, executive director of planned giving, at (202) 885-3411 or speyer@american.edu; or visit american.edu/plannedgiving.