Dr. Sellers J. Parker

Dr. Sellers J. Parker  was the first dean of the Division of Agriculture and Technology at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. His career, which spanned four decades, included working in the state’s racially segregated education system to promote improved agricultural practices among African-American farmers and the eventual integration of agricultural research, teaching and extension programs at UAPB into the state University System. Dr. Parker was born in 1911 in the Phillips County community of Wabash. He received a B.S. degree in 1939 from Arkansas AM&N College (now UAPB) and M.S. and PhD (1949) degrees from Cornell University. Before beginning graduate studies at Cornell, he taught vocational agriculture at Cleveland in Conway County and organized the first Black Agricultural Association in Arkansas. After completing his graduate studies, Dr. Parker returned to AM&N College as a professor of horticulture and became the first dean of the Division of Agriculture and Technology in 1962. His accomplishments included publications on vegetable production, establishing the annual Rural Life Conference for interaction among agricultural research and extension workers and the public, which he chaired for 30 years, and organizing a vegetable farmers’ cooperative in 1974. Arkansas AM&N became UAPB as part of the state-wide University system in the 1970’s under Dr. Parker’s leadership. The aquaculture program initiated by Dr. Parker and Dr. O.R. Holiday at UAPB in 1974 is now the focal point of state research and extension programs in support of Arkansas’ rapidly expanding fish farming industry. In 1981, Dr. Parker established a Foundation Scholarship for students majoring in Agriculture. Dr. Parker, who retired in 1982 and died in 1987, received the prestigious George Washington Carver Public Service Award in 1984. When the award was presented by the Carver Foundation, it was said that Dr. Parker’s life reflected Carver’s philosophy of “the one great ideal—to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of my people.”