William Darity Sr.
*William Darity Sr. was born on January 15, 1924. He was a Black public health advocate, academic administrator, and activist.
William Alexander (Bill) Darity Sr. was born in East Flat Rock, N.C. Neither of his parents, Aden Randall and Elizabeth Smith Darity, had been educated beyond the sixth grade. Still, they managed to provide a college education for their children. Darity earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Shaw University and a Master of Science in Public Health from North Carolina Central University. In 1964, he became the first African American to earn a doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which took him only two years to complete.
After working for two years with The North Carolina Fund, an anti-poverty agency, Dr. Darity joined the University of Massachusetts at Amherst faculty in 1965. At that time, the public health department had three full-time faculty members. He was appointed head of the department in 1968 and then dean of the School of Health Sciences in September 1973. Before pursuing his doctoral degree, Dr. Darity's international experience included 10 years with the World Health Organization (WHO).
He also served as a health consultant with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Arab Refugees and as a WHO Regional Advisor for 17 countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, which included 11 Arab countries, as well as Israel, Cyprus, Iran, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Pakistan and West Pakistan (now Bangladesh), focused primarily upon malaria eradication in those countries.
One of his final research efforts at The University of Massachusetts was to serve as principal investigator of a $3.4 million, five-year research study on smoking and cancer among Blacks, funded by the National Cancer Institute. This investigation explored the factors affecting smoking adoption and accompanying health risks among middle- and low-income Blacks. After retirement, he served as senior associate and deputy director for Asia and the Near East for the Population Council of New York and as a consultant on several research projects at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine in Baltimore. Dr. Darity was a UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees member between 1985 and 1991.
Shaw University honored him as an outstanding alumnus in March 2015, and he was inducted into UNC-Chapel Hill's Golden Rams Society in November 2014. Earlier, he was named a UNC distinguished alumnus (1996) and received the Alumni Achievement Award from Shaw University (1997). He also received an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree from Shaw University (1990) and a Distinguished Service Award from the UNC School of Public Health Alumni Association (1977). He died on died November 29, 2015.
