In Memoriam
Dr. Jewel Limar Prestage (1931-2014)
The Ronald W. Walters Leadership and Public Policy Center joins political scientists, academics, and
many others in mourning the passing of Dr. Jewel Limar Prestage. Dr. Prestage worked with Dr. Ronald
Walters in the growth and development of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists
(NCOBPS) and in the recognition of black political scientists and their work by the American Political
Science Association (APSA).
Dr. Prestage is considered the “mother of the NCOBPS” because she identified black political scientists
from throughout the country and convened them at Southern University to lay the groundwork for the
founding of the organization. She remained an active member until her death.
At 22 years of age, she became the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. in political science in the United
States. She took a leadership role in the profession with academic research in the areas of race, gender,
and politics. Her book, ``A Portrait of Marginality,'' that she coauthored with Dr. Marianne Githens, was a
groundbreaking work on minority women and politics.
For years, Dr. Prestage served as the chair of the Political Science Department at Southern University.
She later joined the faculty at Prairie View University, where she became Dean of the Banneker Honors
College. In those positions, she actively groomed the next generation of black political scientists, not only
through her teaching, but also through the programs and activities she brought to the campus and the
opportunities she found for her students beyond undergraduate school. She rejected offers from many
majority institutions, choosing to keep her talents at HBCUs. Her students have found success in
academia, politics, law, public service and other fields.
The words of the late Hanes Walton, Jr. taken from Introduction: Essays In Honor of a Black Scholar—
Jewel Limar Prestage are quite appropriate to be quoted today:
In other words, not only is she known as a scholar, but also as a mover, a doer, a maker, a
shaper, and a sculptor of black political science, black political scientists, black political
scientists professional organizations, and the art of black politics. She wrestled from white
academicians the money, the recognition, the assistance and the aid needed to move black
politics to a new level.
Dr. Prestage still found time to be a wife to Dr. James Prestage for the last 60 years and mother to five
children, Terry, Grady, Eric, Karen and Jay.
Dr. Elsie Scott, director of the Ronald Walters Center, sees the passing of Dr. Prestage as a very personal
loss because she was one of ‘Jewel’s jewels”, as her former students like to call themselves. “I will miss
the hour plus phone calls where I would have to not only report on what was happening in my life, but on
the well-being of my siblings and her other former students. While the field of political science has lost a
great scholar, professor and leader in the field, I have lost my academic and professional advisor and
champion. I have lost my academic mother.”