In addition to Commencement speaker Doris Kearns Goodwin, six other individuals -- lawyer Julius Levonne Chambers, scholar John Hope Franklin, philanthropist Millard Fuller, virologist Samuel Katz '48, geneticist Mary-Claire King and author Grace Paley -- will receive honorary degrees during today's ceremony.
Katz and King will receive honorary doctor of science degrees; Franklin, Goodwin and Paley will receive honorary doctor of letters degrees; and Chambers and Fuller will receive honorary doctor of laws degrees.
Julius Levonne Chambers
Chambers, who was former director-counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Legal Defense and Education Fund, currently serves as Chancellor of North Carolina Central University.
Chambers is famous for arguing numerous civil-rights court cases, most notably Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, a landmark 1971 case in which the Supreme Court upheld busing as a means of achieving desegregation.
The first legal intern for the NAACP, Chambers also established North Carolina's first interracial law firm in 1964. In addition, he became the first black editor-in-chief of the North Carolina Law Review.
Chambers received his bachelor's degree in history summa cum laude from North Carolina College. He earned a master's degree in history from the University of Michigan and an advanced law degree from Columbia University.
John Hope Franklin
Southern and African American history scholar John Hope Franklin is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Franklin is best known for his book "From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans," but has published many other works, including "Reconstruction After the Civil War" and "The Militant South." His most recent book, "My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin," is an autobiography of his father he edited with his son.
Franklin received his undergraduate degree at Fisk University and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Harvard University. Since, he has taught at Fisk University, St. Augustine's College, North Carolina Central University, Howard University, Brooklyn College, the University of Chicago and Duke University.
He has been awarded the Jefferson Medal, the Cleanth Brooks Medal of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Encyclopedia Britannica Gold Medal, the Charles Frankel Prize, the Alpha Phi Alpha Award and the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award.
Franklin was recently the subject of the PBS documentary, "First Person Singular: John Hope Franklin," which aired in June 1997.
Millard Fuller
President and founder of Habitat for Humanity Millard Fuller made his first million dollars before turning 30; however, Fuller's success in business caused his health and marriage to suffer, and he was prompted to re-evaluate the choices he had made.
Fuller sold his possessions, gave away his fortune to the needy, founded Habitat for Humanity and started building homes for the poor. To this date, Habitat for Humanity has built homes for over 60,000 families in more than 1,300 U.S. cities and 50 other countries.
Fuller graduated from Auburn University in Alabama and received his law degree from the University of Alabama Law School. Fuller received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, the Harry S. Truman Public Service Award and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award.
Fuller has written six books about his project including "A Simple, Decent Place to Live" and "The Theology of the Hammer."
Samuel Katz
Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Medical School alumnus Samuel Katz '48 is a pediatrician and virologist. Katz was instrumental in creating The Comprehensive Childhood Immunization Act of 1993, which now guides immunization policy in the United States.
The Wilburt C. Davison Professor Emeritus at Duke University Medical Center, Katz was the first to publish a report about the successful vaccination of children against measles with live-attenuated virus. Katz is currently the world's leading expert on measles and its prevention.
Mary-Claire King
Geneticist Mary-Claire King is best known for proving the existence of the gene that causes hereditary breast cancer, known as BRCA1. King also found the first direct evidence that this same gene can stop and reverse breast and ovarian cancers. King's current research is focused on AIDS and inherited deafness.
Born in a Chicago suburb, King received her bachelor's degree in mathematics at age 19 from Carleton College. She received her graduate degree in genetics at the University of California at Berkeley and later because a professor there. King currently works as a professor of medical genetics at the University of Washington's School of Medicine.
King is also a political activist and has been instrumental in reuniting children kidnapped during Argentina's civil war with their grandparents by proving the two are related. She has worked with Ralph Nader's consumer interests group and has dedicated her life to improving people's health and lives.
Grace Paley
Author and educator Grace Paley was the first recipient of the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit and has authored three highly acclaimed collections of short fiction: "The Little Disturbances of Man," "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute" and "Later the Same Day."
Paley developed her distinctive literary style at Hunter College in New York and New York University. A Guggenheim fellow, Paley has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, Dartmouth, Syracuse University and the City College of New York.
Paley is active in anti-war, feminist and anti-nuclear movements and has been a member of the War Resisters' League, Resist and Women's Pentagon Action.
She was also one of the founders of the Greenwich Village Peace Center and was awarded a Senior Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1987 in recognition of her lifetime of contribution to literature.
