Patricia Hilliard-Nunn , who inspired students in the African American Studies Program at the University of Florida and led a truth and reconciliation effort focused on the troubling history of racial violence in Alachua County before her death in August 2020, has been posthumously promoted to master lecturer.
“To my knowledge, no faculty member at UF has been promoted posthumously before now,” said David Richardson, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “I’m grateful that Provost Scott Angle and Danaya Wright, the president of the Faculty Senate, found a path to move this forward.”
Hilliard-Nunn, who earned her Ph.D. in mass communications from Florida State University, used her scholarship to explore the history of racial violence in North Central Florida, documenting the extra-judicial killing of a group of people in Newberry in 1916. Active beyond the UF campus, she shared that history of violence during the Jim Crow era through programs in Gainesville-area schools, churches and at civic events.