Service Held for Professor John T. McCartney

A MEMORIAL SERVICE was held April 4 in Colton Chapel for John T. McCartney, professor of government and law, who died March 28. The faculty adopted a memorial resolution at its May 1 meeting.

McCartney’s areas of special interest and expertise included black politics and political thought, Latin America and the Caribbean, and African politics. He taught courses on politics in the United States, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Western Europe.

He developed and co-taught the three-week interim-abroad course The Politics and Literature of the Modern Caribbean with Bryan Washington, associate professor of English, and was faculty adviser for the Association of Black Collegians.

McCartney received numerous awards for his teaching and research including the Marquis Distinguished Teaching Award, Student Government Superior Teaching Award, and Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Faculty Lecture Award for excellence in teaching and scholarship.

His book Black Power Ideologies: An Essay in African American Thought (Temple University Press, 1992) is viewed as a major contribution to American intellectual history.

McCartney joined the faculty in 1986 as assistant professor, was promoted to associate professor in 1992, and full professor in 2002. He was former chair of Africana Studies, which he helped develop, and served as head of government and law from 1998 to 2007.