The North Star

Rooted in Oberlin: Dr. Johnnetta Cole on Building a Lifelong Legacy

• JeffriAnne Wilder, Ph.D. • Season 2 • Episode 8

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In the season finale of The North Star, JeffriAnne Wilder, Ph.D. sits down with legendary educator, anthropologist, and social justice activist Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Ph.D., Oberlin alumna, former president of Spelman and Bennett Colleges, and past director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art—for a powerful conversation about a life shaped by Oberlin, sisterhood, and an unwavering commitment to equity. Dr. Cole shares intimate stories of intergenerational Black excellence, from her great-grandfather A. L. Lewis, Florida’s first Black millionaire, to her own path from Fisk to Oberlin, where she discovered anthropology and learned to follow passion over prescription. She offers candid wisdom for today’s students and emerging leaders about being “intellectually naked,” embracing purpose, and treating self-care as political—noting, in conversation with Audre Lorde’s famous words, that neglecting her own health had lifelong consequences even as she helped transform institutions and movements around the world, making her presence as the closing guest of this season all the more profound.

🔗 Find out more about Dr. JeffriAnne Wilder.
🔗 Follow the Center for DEI Innovation and Leadership on LinkedIn.
🌎Visit Oberlin College's website.
Podcast Produced by: Paradigm Media Group

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the North Star, where we sit with voices reshaping how we think about leadership, equity, and justice. In a season devoted to disruption, to those who challenge norms and dream new futures, we're really honored today to host someone many may consider an American institution in her own right. Dr. Jeanetta Cole, an Oberlin College alumna from the class of 1957, is truly a luminary whose influences stretch across education, culture, and social justice. Dr. Cole was the first African-American woman to serve as the president of someone college. Dr. Cole directed Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art. So, over decades, Dr. Cole's work has bridged scholarship, cultural expression, institutional leadership, and activism, always with an eye toward equity and cultural collective uplift. And today we'll spend some time exploring her Oberlin years, her bold move moves through institutions, and the wisdom she offers for emerging leaders who want to move, not just with ambition, but with purpose. So welcome, Dr. Cole.

SPEAKER_01:

I feel very welcome, Sister Professor. And happy to be with you. So I consider this really as quite a quite an honor, you know, to spend time talking about what it was like to be an obie in my early years. But once an Obi, always an Obi. I can't really capture in words the amount of influence that I think Oberlin College has had not just on me as a person, but on all that I've managed to do as an academician, yes, as an anthropologist, and fundamentally as a social justice activist. So thank you for inviting me into your special space. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, before you and I connected today in this special space, you and I shared a previous very special space. I have to share this story because it is just too cool not to share. Um so great. You know, this is actually something that I really very rarely share, you know, with the world, right? Because this is ultimately gonna, you know, live somewhere on social media. So shortly after I um got married, I ultimately uh became pregnant with my oldest daughter and sadly separated from my now former husband and found myself pregnant with my oldest daughter and spent my time in my first pregnancy essentially by myself. And um, I had at the time was a professor at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville and had an amazing support system in Jacksonville, even though I didn't have my family there. I had some amazing folks in my corner there. And one of those amazing folks happened to be Carol Alexander, who at the time was uh the executive director of the Ridge Theater and Museum, which is the African-American um uh museum in uh Jacksonville. I worked with Carol um on some special projects and I was pregnant during that time. And Carol also lived about 10, 15 minutes from me. And she took very, very special care to make sure, especially during that last time, you know, of my pregnancy, to make sure, like, listen, I know your mom is planning to come be with you once you deliver, but I will be on standby for you in case you happen to go into labor early, which I thought it meant meant a great deal to me. So, you know, I went into labor. My mom actually had made it to Jacksonville. So I I, you know, didn't go into labor early, had my daughter, and I didn't really share with anyone that I was in the hospital, but I did share with Carol that I delivered my daughter, Leela. And I'm in the hospital with my mom, had just given birth. You know, Leela's a day or two old. And I look up in the hospital, in the hospital room, in comes Carol, and in comes you, Dr. Cole, into the hospital room. And you all came to visit me and my mom and the baby. And you all were the only visitors that I had in the hospital room, and that meant so much to me. It was so sweet and so special. And I just thought, what is Janetta Cole doing in my hospital room? You know, like what do you care about, little me? And it just, it just, you know, y'all didn't stay long, but it just I will tell you what it had to do with.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, tell me. It had to do with something that is so powerful, so precious, so priceless, but so easy for me to describe. Today it's called sisterhood. And while we can certainly think of incredibly dramatic examples of this, whether it is Harriet Tubman and what she did as a woman to free yes men, but women and children too. And to be now a symbol of all that for us. And you know it can be mighty and magnificent, like like the way a Coretta Scott King in that school up the road of peas called Antioch. Yeah that we were always in competition with to see who was the most progressive. But the way that Coretta Scott King of course she was the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. But she was a sister to countless women, including myself. You know, we have these big visions of these women and what they mean to those of us who are not big like they. But what I'm saying to you is that that visit on that day in that hospital that's about sisterhood too. You were there. I am so grateful. I'm I am a woman of faith, and so I can say I thank God your mom was there. But you needed some sisters in that room with you. And the only thing I can say to just sort of wind this up is that at the center of what I'm talking about is that when you receive it, you gotta be reminded to keep on giving it.

SPEAKER_00:

Ugh, every chance I get, I do. Because it is so important, and I will never forget that. And that little baby will be 14 in a few weeks. And I have another baby. She has a baby sister who's four. So it is truly my joy to be the daughter, to parent two girls and to show them every day what it means to have sisters and the power of sisterhood, whether that's biological or non-biological, familial or not. Right. So that is so important, and I'm so glad to have this full circle moment with you in this space. It is so it means everything, right?

SPEAKER_01:

So you know I'm gonna pick up the phone the moment we're off of this conversation or finish this conversation. Tell her. And I'm calling Carol Alexander. You better because she's gonna call Bootsy. Bootsy, I know that. And let her know that we had this sisterhood moment.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, and tell Carol that I miss her so I absolutely, absolutely. You know, I've been in Oberlin now for almost a year and a half, so I haven't been in Oberlin very long. And one of the things that I noticed immediately after being in higher education for about 24 years is how unique of a place Oberlin is. I say this all the time, and people really don't understand. It truly is no other place like it. And you have already talked about that. What was it like being a student at Oberlin? And can you talk about how Oberlin really is so different compared to all of the other places you have traversed in higher education?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm gonna do the best I can to be concise. Okay. Because I could go on for years. That's okay. But let's paint this image. A young girl. It's me, born into a family that was very prominent. My great-grandfather, Abraham Lincoln Lewis. AL Lewis, yes. A. Lewis, the founder of uh insurance company, the founder of the beach community in which I now live. Jacksonville's first black millionaire. So I grew up, and my mom kept saying, remember your great grandfather who's a millionaire, not us.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

But I grew up not being poor, but I was clearly growing up being black and a girl. And the blessings that came to me that countered the exceptionally effective racism that always trumped the class was that I was growing up in this family that kept saying to me, girl, that's how southern, parents begin almost every conversation if it's in front of somebody who looked like me. Girl, you got to grow up and do something about this. So my parents believed in education like the devil believes in sin. And they had been fortunate. My mother was a graduate of Wilberforce in Ohio.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right.

SPEAKER_01:

My father was a graduate of Knox College in Tennessee. And so when I was fifteen, they'd already sent me to the first grade when I was five. They wouldn't let me turn six. When I was fifteen, they sent me downtown to take some tests, and they said if I passed, I'd go to the university. Fifteen, I don't want to go to a university. I want to be with my girlfriends. Yeah. So stupidly, I checked all the right boxes. And of course, off I went to Fisk University. It was an incredible year, Sister Professor. It was an incredible year. And then tragedy struck. The most traumatic experience of my young life. My father unexpectedly passed away. Oh my gosh. And my sister, who is pretty famous. An Oberlin graduate. And my mother said, You are so distort. You just can't get yourself together after your daddy's death. Go to Oberlin where your sister is. It will be better for you. And I did. I will never, ever, ever, ever regret that decision. As much as I cherish Fisk. And so off I went to Oberlin where my sister was in the conservatory. Or is this maybe a double major. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Who would go on to sing lead roles and opera, especially in Germany.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01:

Lead roles as Salome as Madame Butterfly. That's what a noble in education did for her. Before she turned into a mighty environmentalist. So here I come, the little sister of this what shall I call her, other than Diva. All right? But I arrived on that campus and it was was as if nothing made sense and everything made sense at the same time. I'd come from a fundamentally good, solid Christian background. AME and I'm all of a sudden in the middle of a community where every religion of the world and where non-believers were in communion. Here I am coming from the south with signs everywhere about what I could and could not drink, where I couldn't drink it, what school I couldn't go to, even what library I could or could not go. And I'm in the middle of a place that had been the first in my country to admit black folk. And the first in my country to admit women. And so Oberlin was an extraordinary and revolutionary experience for me. I am to this day still in close touch with a roommate, a best friend, and whose wedding I serve, Cheedy and Dick Etchett. I am still a very devoted Oberlin alumna who will sing the praises of my school if you even begin to say Oberlen But I'm also right now in an intensely troubled world and a country that I can say I can on days not even recognized. And now I'm finally able to draw a closure on this. But I find that it is to Oberlin and other places. But Oberlin is always there that I turn to try to understand. It is to Oberlin and yes, other places, but it's always to Oberlin that I turn to get my faith renewed, to get my commitment to social justice fired up. So I'm sorry, but you asked the question, so you're gonna get long response you just got.

SPEAKER_00:

I did. You know, I I'm the professor, but I do feel like I'm sitting in your class, right, just taking notes. And I think it is so, it is it is so enlightening to hear your response. And it's giving me chills to hear, you know, for you to describe what it was like to be a student at Oberlin during the time that you were there. Because as you were talking, I'm thinking about some of the students that I'm I'm you know teaching right now, and really excited for them to hear you talk about your Oberlin experience. Some of the students that I I talk with and teach right now, you know, they're really, I don't want to say dismayed. That's not the right word, but they really are thinking about how they can sort of forge their own path forward now, especially now in 2025, right? Because you mentioned that a lot of the world that we see right now definitely looks different. I mean, there's some things about our world right now that is very different. What kind of advice, what kind of things can you maybe share with current day students around how they make a path forward, pathway forward, using what they're learning today at Oberlin?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm searching for the exact words because I know what it is I want to say. I beg of my OB, sisters, brothers, siblings to be as open to the Oberlin experience as possible. I went there so absolutely certain I was gonna be that pediatrician. I had talked about from being knee high to a duck. But when I walked into Professor George Eaton Simpson's class, when I walked out, I had said goodbye, pediatrics. Hello anthropology. Oberlin is a place where I beg of you, my dearest and youngest, to be so open to almost be this is a strange way to put it. To be Be intellectually naked, willing to try on different ideas, different possibilities. And I know your mammas and your daddies and your aunties and your uncles and them grandpas and grandmas have told you what you are supposed to go to Oberlin and be. But this is your time. This is your time to discover not only who you're gonna be, but who you are. Because that's connected. And whatever is your passion, I've just got to beg you to follow it. I did. I went home from Oberlin that Christmas and told my grandpa I was gonna be an anthropologist, and he looked at me, laughed, and said, What's that? I said, Well, you know, Papa, that's like, I'm gonna be like Margaret Mead. I'm gonna go around the world and understand other cultures and have a better understanding of my own. And he said, Baby girl, how are you gonna make a living doing that? And I remember holding back the tears till I could get to my mother. But she said to me, first of all, remember your grandfather didn't have the privilege you have of getting a college education. So understand his question. And your grandfather's right. You're a young woman. You do need to figure out how you are gonna make a living. But if anthropology is your passion, you have no choice but to follow it. And so, my Obi sisters and brothers, my siblings, if you haven't already found it, find that passion, embrace it, and follow it.

SPEAKER_00:

What does they say? You know, if you follow your passion, you never have to work a day in your life. And I think you did pretty well, right? I think you turned out okay, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, not too badly. I love a second chance from the beginning, but oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00:

So I think that's a that would be a that's a great question for us to to end on. I mean, it's it's almost impossible to sort of think about questions to ask you because you've, you know, amassed so many accolades over the course of your career. It's almost really an unfair question to ask you anything related to your your legacy, right? Like, you know, so to ask you like what what's the most memorable thing that you've done in your career? So I'll ask you that question, right? You know, sort of thinking about like that second chance, anything that you you would do differently, right? So what would you do differently?

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, I sure set myself up for something that I didn't know was coming. I'm gonna have to just say this. If I had a second chance at all of this, I would have taken better care of myself. I sure would not change anything about being an anthropologist, and I will never cease to be a social justice activist. But there's some self care that I gave up in the process of becoming who I became. I'm now a member of the largest marginalized community in the world. No, it's not that I am African American, it's not that I'm a woman. I'm in the community of the disabled because I didn't take care of myself. And in graduate school I was smoked in like a chimney and contracted C O P D. And so I am on oxygen. Fortunately I'm able in a setting like this with you to remove the cannula. But we've got and I'm really speaking to my young obese, we've got to take care of ourselves. When the diagnosis came and I went on the oxygen some years later, I realized I couldn't go back and redo that. But I have to take care of myself going forward. And a wonderful group of my dearest, dearest friends. We call ourselves the inclusion family. Okay. We're the DEAI family. Okay. Sent me a pillow when I came out of the hospital on oxygen. And I look at it every day. It's in my walk-in closet. It has the words of Audrey Lord. And I know you know who she was, is, and forever will be. Absolutely. The last line of this very powerful set of words isn't there, but I always add it each day when I read what's on the pillow. It says, and this is my message to my young and not so young sisters and brothers and siblings who are obese. Audrey Lord said caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self preservation. And the last line, it is a polyptical act exclamation. And so whether it's through meditation or prayer or to eat or exercise or just finding a way to be in communion with who and what you need to be in communion with. Take care of yourself. We need you folk in my generation. I got a birthday in a couple of days. Is it? What day is your birthday? Oh October nineteenth. Oh my. I will be eighty nine years old. Oh my. And I am able to be at some peace about this because I know that at a place called Oberlin, and thank goodness in other places, there are young'uns getting ready to carry on.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much, Dr. Cole. Ugh and happy early birthday. Can I share with you that my birthday is coming up on the 24th? So we got some celebrating to do. Now wait a minute. Are you a Libra or I'm a Scorpio? I'm a Scorpio. You're a Scorpio. Just so close. Yes.

unknown:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

And you're a sister, and that's what matters.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. You are my sister. And I want to say thank you so much for this gift that you have given us today. We are truly so appreciative of all the gems that you've given us. And you have reminded us what leadership looks like. It's about courage, it's about vision, it's about self-care and transparency. And thank you for being my sister. I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_01:

And I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, have a wonderful, wonderful birthday. Thank you. Again, thank you for this gift of your time and your presence. And we are so, so appreciative of the time that you've given us today.

SPEAKER_01:

Stay well and take care. You too. Keep the joy coming in your life.