Ivory A. Toldson

Ivory Achebe Toldson (born 1973) is an American academic and author. He is a professor of Counseling Psychology at Howard University, national director of Education Innovation and Research for the NAACP, the editor-in-chief of the ''Journal of Negro Education, Inc. He is formally the president of Quality Education for Minorities. He served as the executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (WHIHBCUs) under President Barack Obama.

He is the author of ''(Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe in Black People Enough Not to Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear about Black People''.

Early life

Toldson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Ivory Lee Toldson, was a professor at Temple University and Southern University. His stepfather, Imari Obadele, was a professor at Prairie View A&M University, a black nationalist, reparations advocate, and president of the Republic of New Afrika. Toldson's maternal grandfather is John Henry Scott, a voting and civil rights activist from Lake Providence, Louisiana. Toldson's mother, Johnita Scott, raised him in North Baton Rouge, where she ran a home-based daycare center in a working-class neighborhood. He attended and graduated from Istrouma High School.

After high school, Toldson attended Louisiana State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree, followed by a master's degree from Pennsylvania State University and a PhD in Counseling Psychology from Temple University. He completed predoctoral training at the United States Penitentiary, Atlanta where he completed a dissertation on the cross-cultural validity of a psychological assessment used to diagnose psychopathy.

In the essay, "Four Fathers and One Big Brother: Coming of Age with Tupac in the Ashes of the Black Power Movement," Toldson detailed his emotional experiences as a young Black man, working with Black power era figures, including Tupac Shakur's stepfather Mututu Shakur, and his Gen-X peers who were sentenced during the U.S. War on Drugs. These experiences shaped many of Toldson's academic views on Black boys and men, the educational system, and the criminal justice system.

Career

Toldson began his career at Southern University. While at Southern University, he was awarded the W.E.B. DuBois Fellowship from the United States Department of Justice for his research on police psychology. He also wrote ''Black Sheep: When the American Dream Becomes a Black Man's Nightmare'', a novel for which he won the EboNetwork's Changing Faces award.

He later became an assistant professor of Counseling Psychology at Howard University. He is now a full professor. He also served as a senior research analyst for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, where he published ''Breaking Barriers'' - a series of research and policy reports that examined academic success factors among school-age Black males. Since 2008, he has been the editor-in-chief of the ''Journal of Negro Education

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