February 26, 2011

Lee County native and educator James A. Banks is considered by many to be the “father of multicultural education” in the United States. Growing up in rural Arkansas, Banks earned a PhD from Michigan State University in 1969 and became the first African-American professor in the College of Education at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1992, he founded the Center for Multicultural Education at the university. Scholarship generated during his more than forty years of research has greatly advanced the field of multicultural studies.