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Vivian Wilson Henderson

Biography
Dr. Vivian Henderson was an educator and human rights activist born in Bristol, Tennessee. Dr. Henderson was also the president of Clark Atlanta Univeristy in 1965 before his death. Vivian Wilson Henderson became President of Clark College in 1963, at the young age of 40, where he would serve as president for 10 consecutive years. This appointment was ultimately a victory for the institution, the Methodist Church, and all committed to the excellence of black academia. Dr. Henderson largely believed in the uplift of black schools through investing in them so that they made be able allotted the proper resources in order to showcase the intellect and sheer talent in which they already possessed on a larger scale. Dr. Henderson kept to this ideology and made a personal commitment of mobilizing for the future through the implementation of new facilities, departments, and programs. He rallied to the American industries in search of financial assistance in order to fund these new initiatives. He was not concerned with building a better institution, but more so invested in building a better system for African Americans to live within that supported them versus stifling them.

Education
Dr. Henderson decided to further his education at North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina in 1940 after graduating from Slate high school in Bristol, Tennessee. Dr. Henderson attended North Carolina Central University from 1940-1943 and 1946-1947 where he received his Masters of Business Administration in 1947. He soon proceeded to Iowa state university where he received his masters and Doctorate in economic by 1952.

Career
Vivian Wilson Henderson broadly perceived financial specialist, instructor, and social liberties pioneer, filled in as the eighteenth President of Clark College from 1965 until his passing in 1976. After graduating college Dr. Henderson became an instructor at Prairie View A&M University in Texas from 1948-1949. He also was an instructor at his old college North Carolina Central University from 1949-1950. He then grew to become a professor and chairman of the economics department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee from 1958-1963.

Activism
Dr. Henderson distributed various deals with the financial energy of the dark group. Dr. Henderson played a dynamic part in the social equality development as a coordinator of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, chief of the Voter Education Project, and administrator of the Southern Regional Council's official panel. Continuously an effective, yet mollifying, voice in the social equality development, he pushed monetary strengthening of blacks—yet not at the cost of driving whites and different races from Atlanta. In 1971, Governor Jimmy Carter chose Dr. Henderson as co-administrator of the Georgia Goals Commission to get ready for Carter's redesign of Georgia state government. Dr. Henderson stayed dynamic in educating, driving Clark College, and supporting the financial development of the dark group until his demise on January 28, 1976.

Research
From 1962 to 1964 he was a meeting researcher of financial matters at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Henderson wrote various works including The Economic Imbalance, Economic Dimensions in Race Relations, Economic Opportunity and Negro Education, The Economic Status of Negroes, The Advancing South, Employment Race and Poverty, and Negro Colleges Face the Future. Henderson was engaged with various urban, group, and social equality associations and was very looked for after to serve on nearby, state, local, national, and global government and corporate councils, commissions, teams, and sheets.

Legacy and Achievements
Although becoming President of Clark College. His memberships included the boards of directors of the National Sharecroppers Fund; Potomac Institute; Fulton County Equal Employment Opportunities Committee and the General Board of Christian Social Concerns of the Methodist Church. He also served as a member of the National Manpower Advisory Committee and the National Advisory Committee for Project Upward Bound.

He also served as chairman of the Georgia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights and was a member of the U.S. National Commission to UNESCO from 1969 to 1972, serving on education and human rights committees.

Henderson was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation and was president and chairman of the executive committee of the Southern Regional Council. He was also a director of the National Urban Coalition; National Bureau of Economic Research; Common Cause; Atlanta Chamber of Commerce; Martin Luther King Center for Social Change; and was a trustee of American University.

He was co-chairman of the Interstate Committee on Human Resources and Public Services of the Southern Growth Policies Board, and was chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission Health Manpower Task Force.

He was a founding member of the Black Academy of Arts and Sciences and was a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Henderson was a life member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and was a director of the Voter Education Project. Other directorships included the Atlanta Urban League; Atlanta Community Chest; Atlanta chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews; and Atlanta Civil Liberties Union.

Henderson served as co-chairman of Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson's Reorganization Task Force in 1973, and as education co-chairman of then Governor Jimmy Carter's Goals for Georgia Progress. He participated in President Gerald Ford's White House Conference on Inflation in 1974.

Henderson received the Medal for Distinguished Service from Columbia University in 1970, and was the recipient of the W.E.B. DuBois Award of the Association of Social and Behavioral Scientists in 1974.

Henderson also was a veteran, having served his country as a top sergeant in the Army during World War II.