Dr. William Neal Brown (1919-2009) was a social work practitioner and educator who began his professional social work career after serving in World War II as a Tuskegee Airman. In 1956 he became the first Black professor at Rutgers University where he taught for the next 33 years, retiring in 1989. 

Earlier in his life, following his 1946 discharge from the Army Air Corps, Brown went to work as a social group worker in Englewood, New Jersey. In 1952, Brown began working as a psychiatric social worker with the Veterans Administration in Newark, New Jersey. While working full-time, Brown earned his MSW from Columbia University in 1950. In 1969, he earned his PhD in Human Growth and Development from the City University of New York.

In 1961, Brown was invited to debate Malcolm X on “Integration versus Separation.” This was a major event, held in Newark, New Jersey, and co-sponsored by the NAACP and the Black Students Association. A recording of this debate is now part of the permanent collection in the Library of Congress. Throughout his career, Brown was an active member of NASW.

King Davis, PhD, MSW, has been a beacon in the world of social justice, illuminating and guiding policy makers, bureaucrats, practitioners, and students on the mental health realities and needs of all people, but with a focus on the African American community.  Dr. Davis’ work emphasized cultural competence in relation to managed behavioral health care.  His ground-breaking report for the State of Virginia, on training for work with individuals with serious mental illness, was completed while Davis held simultaneous appointments as the John Galt Endowed Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at the University of Virginia, the Medical College of Virginia, and Eastern Virginia Medical School. King subsequently was named Commissioner of the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services for the Commonwealth of Virginia, serving from 1990-1995. 

Davis continued to hold both academic appointments and administrative leadership positions when he left Virginia for Texas. He was the executive director of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, and later was selected for the Mike Hogg Endowed Chair in Community Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, College of Liberal Arts, African and African Diaspora Studies Department. 

Davis’s current, unprecedented research focuses on 100 years of admissions to Virginia’s Central Lunatic Asylum State hospital, the segregated and only mental hospital for Black patients. He has received funding to preserve and digitize thousands of case records. While the records have thus far revealed little about individual patients, they have, in the aggregate, pointed a disturbing picture of the facility’s past. And they say much about the history and oppression of institutionalized Black lives.

Samuel Bernard Little, PhD, MSW, is known as a powerful advocate for equitable U.S. public housing. As founding president of the National Alliance of Resident Services in Affordable and Assisted Housing (NAR-SAAH), Dr. Little served the organization for 21 years. Through NAR-SAAH he has provided technical assistance to employees of resident services and members of resident councils to help shape national housing policy, expand partnerships with community agencies, leverage funds to support resident programs, and address impacts of changing economic conditions and shifting political priorities. 

Little is a seasoned administrator.  He has served with distinction for three large public housing authorities in Baltimore, Maryland, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. Additionally, Little served from 1974-1992 in the Baltimore Mayor’s Office of Manpower Resources as Administrator of Family Services; and as associate dean for Field Education at the University of Maryland School of Social Work (2013 – 2023).  He also served as an adjunct faculty member for the Howard University School of Social Work for 10 years. Although retired from these academic roles, he continues to work with faculty and students on research related to improving the quality of life in public housing.  His research interests and publications have focused on public housing, homelessness, and field education.

Karen Bullock, PhD, LICSW, is the Louise McMahon Ahearn Endowed Professor in the Boston College School of Social Work and in Global Public Health. She has been a leading force in advancing social work education and training in health disparities, health equity, serious illness care, aging and gerontology, hospice, palliative and end-of-life care decision making for the last two decades. Bullock is the first and only social work practitioner who was honored as the 2024 Richard Payne Outstanding Achievement in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award by the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

Through Bullock’s trailblazing research and practice focus, she has championed a meaningful role for social workers in the areas of hospice and palliative care - now known as serious illness care. With particular expertise in addressing health disparities and health equity, her pioneering contributions are highly regarded by physicians, nurses, and allied health clinicians on primary care teams. In an area of health that has long been led by physicians, Bullock has made a space for social work and other behavioral health professions to advance interdisciplinary practice for underrepresented patient populations.  Notably, she was the first social worker to be selected and served as a Visiting Professor in Palliative Care at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Division of General Medicine/Internal Medicine, in 2019.  

Bullock has pursued this work since the beginning of her career because of her longstanding concern about disparities and inequities in health care. She has been a principal investigator and/or coinvestigator for more than $5 million in federal grant funding focused on equity and inclusion for workforce development, aging, and health network sustainability. Specifically, Bullock has been studying why seriously ill Black patients – with incurable conditions like cancer or kidney failure – are less likely to get palliative care, and what it would take to change that. 

Bullock’s ability to advance diversity within the social work profession includes serving as the current chair of the NASW National Committee on Racial and Ethnic Diversity (NCORED) since 2019. In 2020 Bullock took the lead to make significant changes to the NASW Code of Ethics to include amended language., which the Delegate Assembly voted to adopt.

Charles E. Lewis, Jr., PhD, MSW, is the founding director of the Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy (CRISP). Lewis also served as deputy chief of staff and communications director for former Congressman Edolphus “Ed” Towns (D-NY). Dr. Lewis was instrumental in creating the Congressional Social Work Caucus with the idea it would be a platform that would allow social workers to have more of a voice in Congress. While on the Hill as the staff coordinator for the Caucus, Lewis organized briefings for NASW, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), and the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR). His work has significantly impacted the representation of social workers in Congress, providing them with a platform to voice their concerns and advocate for policies relevant to the profession and responding to critical social welfare issues as they arise. Lewis has inspired many social workers to pursue careers in political social work. He authors a blog about political social work that is widely read by professionals in the field, across the country.

Dexter R. Voisin, PhD, MSW, LCSW, as an early pioneer, provided vital clinical services for individuals dealing with co-occurring HIV, drug use and mental health challenges during a time when stigma and accessibility barriers were prevalent. He currently serves as dean of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. 

Voisin’s trailblazing research illuminates the fundamental structural causes of violence and health disparities, particularly how they disproportionately affect Black youth and adults. He effectively advocates for the recasting and redefining of structural violence as trauma, shifting the focus towards empathy rather than blame. He is a public intellectual and has made numerous national and international media appearances to amplify the significance and impact of his research, effectively disseminating his findings to a wide audience, and elevating the voices from communities that are often overlooked.

African Americans and Labor

5 Black Leaders that Shaped the Labor Movement

African Americans and the American Labor Movement

Honoring Black Labor Leaders

8 Black Women Labor Leaders You Should Know

Civil Rights and the Labor Movement: A Historical Overview

A Brief History of Labor, Race and Solidarity

Other Resources

The Origins of Black History Month

Black History Month Digital Toolkit

How to Celebrate Black History Month in the Workplace

African American History - National Archives

NASW-Michigan Social Justice & Anti-Racism Committee

NASW-Michigan Advocacy

Celebrate Black History Month with 15% off select NASW Press books and eBooks through February 28. Use code APBHM25 at checkout.