Ramona Edelin, helped popularize term ‘African American,’ dies at age 78

Ramona Edelin, an academic-turned-activist who helped popularize the term “African American” in the late 1980s through her association with the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, and who later helped make charter schools a dominant force in D.C. education, died Feb. 19 at her home in Washington. She was 78.

Her death, which was not widely reported at the time, was confirmed by Barnaby Towns, who worked with Dr. Edelin. The cause was cancer, he said.

Raised during the tumult of the civil rights movement, when she was ostracized by White classmates at schools in Georgia and Illinois, Dr. Edelin went on to receive a PhD in philosophy and helped launch the Afro-American studies department at Northeastern University in Boston in 1973, serving as the program’s first chair. Under her leadership, the department soon changed its name to “African American studies,” embracing language that had circulated among scholars but was seldom used by the general public.

That began to change more than a decade later, when the term “African American” was adopted by 75 national Black leaders in the lead-up to a 1989 gathering called the African-American Summit. The meeting was convened by Jackson, the civil rights leader and former presidential candidate, who embraced the term “African American” and was widely credited with inspiring its widespread usage.

By all accounts, he and other Black leaders in the group decided to adopt the term at the suggestion of Dr. Edelin. While helping organize the summit, Dr. Edelin argued that they should refer to themselves as African Americans instead of Blacks.

The term offered historical context, she said, and linked Black Americans to the global African diaspora.