Grace Holt Awards
The Department of Black Studies sponsors an award fund and annual legacy events and in commemoration of Grace Sims Holt, Professor Emeritus and founder of UIC's Black Studies Program, later to become this department. Professor Holt joined UIC in 1968 as an Associate Professor of Speech and Communications was tasked with establishing the campus Black Studies Program, which she headed from 1974 to 1986. In addition, Professor Holt helped gain recognition for black English as an object of study and consistently pushed for maintaining high levels of standards for students that allowed for alternative evidences of accomplishment.