Ramona Edelin

{{Infobox person | birth_name = Ramona Hoage Edelin | birth_date = {{birth date|1945|09|04}} | birth_place = Los Angeles, California, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|2024|2|19|1945|9|4}} | death_place = Washington, D.C., U.S. | alma_mater = Fisk University<br>University of East Anglia<br>Boston University | occupation = | mother = Annette Lewis Phinazee | image = Ramona Edelin at House Committee on Oversight.jpg | caption = Edelin testifying at the United States House Committee on Oversight and Reform in 2011 }}

'''Ramona Hoage Edelin''' (September 4, 1945 – February 19, 2024) was an American academic, activist and consultant. Edelin is credited with introducing the term "African American" into the general vernacular.<ref name="Encyclopedia">{{cite web |title=Edelin, Ramona Hoage 1945– {{!}} Encyclopedia.com |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/edelin-ramona-hoage-1945 |website=Encyclopedia.com |access-date=9 January 2020}}</ref> She has been named one of the most influential Black Americans by ''Ebony.''<ref name="HistoryMakers">{{cite web |title=Ramona Edelin's Biography |url=https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/ramona-edelin-39 |website=The HistoryMakers |access-date=9 January 2020 |language=en}}</ref> She later served as executive director of the DC Association of Charter Schools.<ref name="DCACPC">{{cite web |title=Executive Director |url=https://www.dcacps.org/about-us/executive-director.html |website=DC Association of Chartered Public Schools |access-date=9 January 2020 |language=en-gb}}</ref>

==Early life and education==

Ramona Hoage was born on September 4, 1945, in Los Angeles, California, to George Hoage and Annette Lewis Hoage Phinazee. She was an only child.<ref name="Encyclopedia"/> Her father died in a motorcycle crash two weeks before she was born.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Marquard |first=Bryan |date=2024-03-28 |title=Ramona Edelin, who advocated for using the term ‘African American,’ dies at 78 |url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/03/28/metro/ramona-edelin-who-advocated-using-term-african-american-dies-78/ |access-date=2025-02-04 |website=The Boston Globe |language=en-US}}</ref> Her mother was the first woman to earn a PhD in library science from Columbia University, and encouraged Ramona to pursue an academic career.<ref name=":1" />

Edelin's family moved to Atlanta, Georgia where she attended Oglethorpe Elementary School. Her family moved again, to Carbondale, Illinois, and she briefly attended Lincoln Junior High School there.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Smith |first=Jessie Carney |title=Notable Black American Women |publisher=Gale |year=1992 |volume=1 |location=Detroit, Michigan |chapter=Ramona Hoage Edelin}}</ref> Her family then moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts where Edelin attended Stockbridge High School. She graduated in 1963.<ref name="HistoryMakers" />

Edelin then attended Fisk University, receiving the Sarah McKim Maloney Award in 1964, participating in the honors program, and placing on the dean's list almost every semester. She became a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Gold Key Honor Society, edited the ''Fisk Forum'' campus newspaper, and was contributing editor to the ''Fisk Herald'' student literary magazine. She created one of the first university voluntary honor codes, which students signed to enable taking unmonitored tests. She was voted Miss Sophomore and Miss Alpha Phi Alpha. She also was selected to attend intensive courses at Harvard University the summer before her senior year. She earned her Fisk bachelor's degree magna cum laude in religious and philosophical studies, with departmental honors, in 1967.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" />

In 1967, she married Kenneth Edelin.<ref name="McFadden">{{cite web |last1=McFadden |first1=Robert D. |date=30 December 2013 |title=Kenneth C. Edelin, Doctor at Center of Landmark Abortion Case, Dies at 74 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/us/kenneth-c-edelin-physician-at-center-of-landmark-abortion-case-dies-at-74.html |access-date=9 January 2020 |website=The New York Times}}</ref> Kenneth needed to complete a tour of military service in England and Ramona moved there to study as well.<ref name=":0" /> She earned her master's degree in philosophy at the University of East Anglia in 1969. In 1981, she completed her PhD in philosophy at Boston University.<ref name="HistoryMakers" /> Her dissertation was on W. E. B. Du Bois.<ref name=":0" />

==Career==

=== Teaching career === Edelin taught at various institutions after completing college in 1969, including the University of Maryland's European Division, Emerson College, Brandeis University, and Northeastern University.<ref name="DCACPC" /><ref name=":0" /> At Northeastern, she founded the first African American Studies program under the name of Black studies in 1972, and became department chair when it launched as the Afro-American studies department in 1973. It then changed names to African American studies in 1975.<ref name=":1" /> This period in time is when she is also credited with introducing the term "African American" to the academic community.<ref name="Encyclopedia" />

By 1975, she had separated from her husband, Kenneth Edelin, who was the first Black chief resident in obstetrics and gynecology at Boston City Hospital. He was convicted of manslaughter that year by a Boston jury for a legal abortion which he had performed after ''Roe v. Wade''. The next year, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed the verdict. Ramona spoke out on her husband's behalf to the media, and compared the city's racial violence towards Black children to their anti-abortion sentiments. She also criticized the Catholic Church's stance on abortion law, since many of the jurors on the case were Catholics and men.<ref name=":1" />

=== National Urban Coalition === Edelin left Northeastern and started working for the National Urban Coalition in 1977.<ref name="HistoryMakers" /> She joined as executive assistant to the president, and progressed to director of operations, vice president of operations, and senior vice president of program and policy. She specialized in urban issues, and in her last role, she led programs in housing, economic development, health and urban education, and advocacy. She helped develop the "Say YES to a Youngster's Future" program, which was designed to expose Black, Latino, Native American, and female children to math, science, and computer science to prepare them for technology jobs.<ref name=":0" />

In 1988, she met with Jesse Jackson and other Black leaders. During the meeting, Edelin shared the meaning and importance of the term "African American." Shortly thereafter, Jackson began regularly using the term, popularizing it in the American vernacular.<ref name="Encyclopedia"/>

By 1989, Edelin was serving as president and chief executive officer of the National Urban Coalition.<ref name="HistoryMakers"/><ref name="Company1989">{{cite book|author=Johnson Publishing Company|title=Ebony|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xMwDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA76|date=July 1989|publisher=Johnson Publishing Company|page=76}}</ref> She created the M. Carl Holman Leadership Development Institute and the Executive Leadership Program and created landmark education programs for African American children.<ref name="HistoryMakers"/> Edelin was also program chairperson for the African American Summit of 1989, which focused on creating a united agenda for political and economic empowerment for African Americans. Edelin viewed her work as part of the "cultural offensive" to use cultural renewal to empower African Americans politically and economically. She did not think that African Americans had a single group identity, battling "twoness," which was also a concern of W. E. B. Du Bois's. She thought that having a united group identity would help ensure self-sufficiency, highlighting African legacies and enabling rebirth and development.<ref name=":0" />

=== Federal initiatives === Edelin joined the board of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in 1991. In February 1998, after leaving the National Urban Coalition, she became the Foundation's executive director.<ref name="DCACPC"/> That same year, she was appointed by then president Bill Clinton to the Presidential Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. She also visited South Africa with Clinton that year.<ref name="HistoryMakers"/>

Edelin left the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in 2002. She served for one year, starting in 2003, as Vice President, Policy and Outreach of the Corporation for Enterprise Development.<ref name="DCACPC"/> She later served as executive director of the DC Association of Charter Schools from 2006 to 2020. When it was succeeded by the D.C. Charter School Alliance, she served as senior advisor to that group. Ariel Johnson, a head of the D.C. Charter School Alliance, applauded Edelin's leadership of the charter school movement, saying that “without her leadership, it’s safe to say that the charter school movement in the United States, and certainly the nation’s capital, would not be where it is today."<ref name=":1" />

=== Board positions === Edelin has also been involved in the District of Columbia Humanities Council, a member of the Board of Elders of the African Heritage Institute, and a board of directors member for the Boston Black Repertory Company, WINNERS, The Bridge, and the Association for Better Living. She was also a member of Delta Sigma Theta and Women in Politics.<ref name=":0" />

== Awards and honors == In 1975, she earned the Roxbury Action Program Distinguished Service Award, and was named one of the Outstanding Young Women of America.<ref name=":0" />

In 1982, ''Ebony'' named her one of their Women to Watch. In 1983, she was selected for the IBM Community Executive Program. She earned the 1986 YWCA Academy of Women Achievers award. In 1989, she earned the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Leadership Award for Progressive Leadership.<ref name=":0" />

Northeastern created the Ramona Edelin Award in her honor, for academic achievement in Africana studies. This is the same department that she founded under a different name.<ref name=":1" />

==Personal life==

In 1967, she married Kenneth Edelin. The couple had two children together, Kenneth Edelin Jr. and Kimberley Freeman. The couple divorced and Kenneth Sr. died in 2013.<ref name=":1" />

Edelin later had a relationship with Alonzo Speight and had a second son, Ramad Speight.<ref name=":1" />

Edelin resided in Washington, D.C.<ref name="HistoryMakers" /> She died there on February 19, 2024 at the age of 78, from cancer.<ref>{{cite news|title=Ramona Edelin, who helped popularize the term 'African American,' dies at 78|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/03/26/ramona-edelin-dead/|date=March 26, 2024|last=Smith|first=Harrison|newspaper=Washington Post|access-date=April 1, 2024}}</ref>

==Bibliography== ;Works by Ramona Hoage Edelin<ref name=":0" /> *"Revolutionary Aspects of Acquiring Skills". Atlanta University, Center for African and African-American Studies position paper *"Kenneth C. Edelin: A Living Sacrifice?" ''Encore'' (1975) *"Has Anyone Read ''The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual'' Lately?" ''Black World'' (1976) *"Shirley Graham Du Bois" ''First World'' (1977) *"Role of the African Woman Since Slavery: Culture Bearer" ''Encore'' excerpt (1975) *"Women at Work" coauthor; Wellesley College Center for Research on Women (1978) *"On the Cultural Offensive" column for ''Afro-American'' *''We the Village: Achieving our Collective Greatness Now''. Chicago: Third World Press (2014). {{ISBN|0883783290}}

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== *{{C-SPAN|7194}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Edelin, Ramona}} Category:1945 births Category:2024 deaths Category:Writers from Los Angeles Category:Writers from Washington, D.C. Category:Black studies scholars Category:Fisk University alumni Category:Alumni of the University of East Anglia Category:Boston University College of Arts and Sciences alumni Category:University of Maryland, College Park faculty Category:Emerson College faculty Category:Brandeis University faculty Category:Northeastern University faculty Category:21st-century African-American women Category:21st-century African-American people Category:20th-century African-American women Category:20th-century African-American people