Dr. Darlene Clark Hine
*Darlene Clark Hine was born on this date in 1947. She is a Black author, educator, and historian.
Hine is from Morley, Missouri, the oldest of four children of Levester Clark, a truck driver, and Lottie Mae (Thompson) Clark, a homemaker. Her grandmother was an early influence in her life. When she was three, her family moved to Chicago while young Hine remained behind with her grandparents. When she was nine, Hine joined her family on the west side of Chicago.
Growing up, her routine was weekdays she went to school, Sundays to church, and Saturdays to the public library. After graduating from Crane High School as valedictorian, Hine was offered a full scholarship to Chicago's Roosevelt University, where she began undergraduate work in 1964. In 1970, she married William C. Hine; they divorced in 1974.
During this time, Hine became an assistant professor of history and coordinator of black studies (1972-74) at South Carolina State College, Orangeburg, SC. From 1974 to 1979, Hine was an assistant professor and associate professor, 1979-85; professor of history, 1985-87 at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. She became interim director of Africana Studies and Research Center, 1978-79, vice provost, 1981-86; Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, John A. Hannah Professor of History, 1987- to the present.
Hine married Johnny E. Brown in 1981 and divorced in 1986; she has one daughter, Robbie Davine. Professor Hine is a pioneering scholar of African American women's history. She has written three books on African American women's history and edited a two-volume encyclopedia, Black Women in America, the first major encyclopedia on the subject.
Hine is a leading expert on race, class, and gender in American society. As the John A. Hannah Professor of History at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Hine helped to establish a new doctoral field in comparative African American history. She has co-edited a 16-volume series on African American history in the United States, Milestones in African American History, and numerous anthologies.
Hine has received many awards, including the Outstanding Book Award, Gustavus Myers Center of Human Rights, 1990; Letitia Woods Brown Book Award, Association of Black Women Historians, 1990; Outstanding Reference Source Award, American Library Association, 1994; Zora Neale Hurston-Paul Robeson Award, National Council for Black Studies, 1995. Hine was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Massachusetts in 1998 and Amherst from Purdue University in 2002. In 2010 the inaugural Organization of American Historians presented the Darlene Clark Hine Award for the best book in African American Women and Gender History. President Barack Obama presented Hine with the 2013 National Humanities Medal for her work on understanding the African American experience.
