Educating African American Males: Detroit's Malcolm X Academy Solution

Clifford Watson Clifford D. Watson is the principal of the Malcolm X Academy, an Elementary School serving grades K-8 in Detroit, Michigan. Geneva Smitherman Educating African-American Males DR. GENEVA SMITHERMAN is University Distinguished Professor Emerita, Department of English, Co-Founder, Core Faculty and former Acting Director, African American and African Studies, and Core Faculty, African Studies Center, at Michigan State University (MSU), in East Lansing, Michigan. She began her life-long commitment to the education and development of Black youth while still a teenager, serving as a high school teacher of English and Latin in the Detroit Public Schools (DPS). Early on, in her work in the academic vineyards of Black Studies, students dubbed her Dr. G, in recognition of her academic accomplishments-Dr.-and in celebration of her having remained their girl-G. She proudly answers to and is nationally and internationally known as both Dr. G and Dr. Smitherman. Dr. Smitherman is author and editor/coeditor of 15 books and monographs and over 125 articles, essays, and published opinion pieces. In 2006, she published Word from the Mother: Language and African Americans. Her latest work, Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language and Race in the U.S.