Constance Berry Newman '56 accepts the Benjamin Mays Medal from President Hansen as Barbara Raths '96, Alumni Association president, looks on. Photo by Lincoln Benedict '09.

Citation delivered by Barbara M. Raths ’96, president of the Alumni Association.

Constance Berry Newman was born in Chicago, where her father was a surgeon and her mother was a social worker and a nurse. The family relocated to Tuskegee, Ala., where Connie attended Tuskegee Institute High School. She graduated from Bates with honors and was elected to membership in the Bates Key women's alumnae service organization, and then went on to complete a law degree at the University of Minnesota Law School in 1959.

An article in the Minnesota Alumni Association Magazine noted that "armed with her Minnesota law degree, Newman began her rise through the ranks of government as a clerk/typist with the U.S. Interior Department — the normal starting point for a lawyer in the government was [six grades higher] — but not for an African American woman in 1962."

Undeterred, Connie worked her way up through a distinguished career in which she served in five presidential appointments; she worked on the staff of the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders, which was set up to examine the causes of the 1967 urban riots, served two years with the Great Society's Office of Economic Opportunity, as regional director for migrant programs in the Midwest, and began her political appointments as a special assistant in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. She went on to head VISTA, was named as a transition aid to recruit minorities and women to fill presidential appointments, and then became head of the Office of Personnel Management. She followed these accomplishments with a position as the Undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution, where she was able to continue to pursue her lifelong personal commitments to international affairs, race relations and art.

Connie has also been both a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow and a member of the adjunct faculty at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, served as deputy director of the National Voter Coalition. Throughout her career, she has been involved in international development issues working to better small companies, non-profit organizations, and to develop programs that promote democracy and strengthen free markets and rule of law throughout the world. In 2001, she was appointed head of the Bureau for Africa for the U.S. Agency for International Development, then was appointed U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in 2004. Although she is now retired from government service, she is by no means retired, and is currently working as a private consultant on business development initiatives to African nations.

In 1972, Constance Berry Newman was the recipient of an honorary degree from Bates for her diligent efforts to solve the social problems of American society. The opening of her citation read: "It is the mark of the historical concern this College has had for service, that so many of its graduates have chosen to celebrate their lives through commitment to public office. When such commitments lead a young graduate into battle against the principalities of fear and the politics of condescension, the College can take heart and join in celebration."

Connie has always had a special talent for gathering all views and then working to get those with different views to understand each others' vantage point in order to reach a compromise. She has won high praise for her wisdom and versatility as a policymaker and an accomplished high-level manager, always sensitive to the problems of poverty and working tirelessly toward finding to best solutions for everyone concerned, and never wavering in her "battle against the principalities of fear and the politics of condescension."

Connie, you have been a model of one who has performed distinguished service to the larger worldwide community throughout your life and career, and have held steadfastly to those values of service, compassion and civic responsibility that all of us at Bates hold so dear. For these and your many other accomplishments that are too numerous to list here, including your service to Bates on the Board of Overseers and as a visiting lecturer, your College has deemed you to be a Bates College graduate of outstanding accomplishment. I am honored to present you with the highest honor we have, The Benjamin Elijah Mays Award at this the occasion of your 50th Reunion and in the presence of your classmates.