Cal U. president to be recognized by local NAACP
The president of California University of Pennsylvania and a CNN pundit will be the featured speaker at an event hosted by the Washington Branch of the NAACP next month.
Cal U. President Geraldine Jones will be the recipient of the group’s 59th annual Human Rights Award during a banquet May 3 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Meadow Lands. The event will begin with a reception at 6 p.m., with dinner an hour later.
Jones is an alumna of the state school and former elementary teacher who’s been an administrator at Cal U. since 1974. She was named president three years ago. She’d led the university in the roles of interim and acting president for the four years prior.
Among the awards she’s previously received are the 2016 ATHENA Award from the Washington County Chamber of Commerce, and recognition in 2010 as one of 50 “Women of Excellence” by the New Pittsburgh Courier. She and Jeffrey Jones, her husband of more than 40 years, have two adult daughters and three grandchildren.
The keynote speaker this year will be Bakari Sellers, an attorney, political commentator on CNN and a former South Carolina state representative. He served in that office from 2006 – when Sellers was 22 – until 2014. When he took office, he was the youngest person to serve in that state’s House of Representatives, and the youngest African American in the country to hold elective office.
Sellers is also a prominent Democratic Party activist who’s made TIME Magazine’s 40 Under 40 list twice and was named among “The Root 100” list of influential African Americans in 2015.