Jewelle Taylor Gibbs

A teacher, author, advocate, and activist addressing race relations

Jewelle Taylor Gibbs earned her bachelor’s degree in social relations from Radcliffe College in 1955, a certificate in business administration from Harvard-Radcliffe in 1959, an MSW in 1970, and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 1980 from the University of California, Berkeley. Her illustrious career as a scholar, teacher, author, role model, advocate, and activist is defined by risk-taking and challenging conventional thought to elevate discourse related to race relations and at-risk, marginalized populations.

Gibbs is best known for two books: Young, Black and Male in America: An Endangered Species (1988), and Children of Color: Psychological Interventions with Minority Youth (1989). The arguments and findings of Young, Black, and Male quickly made their way into public forums from PBS to Congressional hearings, and the concepts are still applicable to the development of strategies by schools, public agencies, and community-based organizations to address the needs of African American men and boys. Children of Color, an edited collection of perspectives about children of six different ethnic groups, was welcomed as a ground-breaking framework about sociocultural and socioeconomic factors that must be considered in assessing children of color and developing effective treatment strategies. Children of Color has been used as a textbook in graduate and undergraduate courses in the United States and other countries for nearly 30 years.

After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Gibbs conducted interviews in Los Angeles with 175 individuals in 16 multicultural focus groups and then followed the OJ Simpson trial of 1995 to write Race and Justice: Rodney King and OJ Simpson in a House Divided. The book explores how white people and black people develop deeply divergent views and expectations of the criminal justice system.

Gibbs was the first African American to hold an endowed chair in the University of California system as the first Zellerbach Family Fund Professor of Social Policy, Community Change, and Practice. She was selected by the foundation in 1993 for her scholarly research on minority youth and their families, which fit the mission and goals of the foundation. Gibbs was a consistently strong voice for the University of California Berkeley's School of Social Welfare's commitment to equity and diversity. Further, she was a member of the University of California Committee on Affirmative Action and co-chaired the UC Berkeley Committee on the Status of Women and Ethnic Minorities (SWEM). The study revealed a chronic pattern of membership appointments from a small set of departments (mostly non-social sciences) and biased criteria for evaluating faculty appointments and promotions, exposing major obstacles to staff diversity at UC Berkeley, resulting in a push to change these discriminatory practices.

Gibb's lifetime work has contributed enormously to the knowledge base and practice of social work at micro and macrolevels, and she has been an action-oriented advocate throughout her life. She has taught thousands of MSW students and served as an instructor, mentor, and advisor for doctoral students. Many of her students have become respected agency leaders, university faculty administrators, and researchers throughout the United States and abroad.