Morgan State is Black History!

A retired United States Army lieutenant general, R. Scott Dingle, served as the 45th surgeon general of the U.S. Army and Commanding General for the Army Medical Command from 2019 to 2024. R. Scott Dingle matriculated from Morgan State University's Army ROTC Program, also known as the Bear Battalion, and earned a bachelor’s degree in Sociology in 1988. He is the first African American man to be appointed Army surgeon general.

A lawyer and jurist from Baltimore, Maryland, the Honorable Robert M. Bell was a prominent activist in the civil rights movement as a high school student who went on to enroll at Morgan State College, where he earned a B.A. in History in 1966. From 1996 to 2013, he served as chief judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals, now known as the Supreme Court of Maryland, the state's highest appellate court. He was the first African American to hold the position.

Sandra Williams Ortega, Ph.D., received a direct commission into the United States Air Force from President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958, becoming Maryland’s first African American woman commissioned as an officer. The Baltimore native graduated from Morgan State College in 1957 and, upon entering the military, was a pioneer for Women of Color in the U.S. Air Force Officer Corps. Breaking down racial and gender stereotypes and biases during her military career, Dr. Ortega assessed the socio-environmental impact on a multicultural, multinational workforce at strategic military sites. A trailblazer for women in military service, Dr. Ortega was inducted into the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame in 2018.

Record industry executive Kevin Liles, former president of Def Jam Recordings and The Island Def Jam Music Group, and EVP of Warner Music Group, studied electrical engineering at Morgan. Liles has been a foremost architect of modern music and purveyor of hip-hop culture. Liles co-founded 300 Entertainment and served as its CEO through September 2024.

Artistic director, composer, conductor, pianist, vocalist and cultural advocate Darin Atwater, the founding artistic director of Soulful Symphony, studied at Morgan under late virtuoso Nathan Carter and maestro Melvin Miles, then pursued Professional Studies in Composition at The Peabody Conservatory. Atwater has appeared with the Baltimore Symphony, National Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Columbus Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and is known for his soul-stirring, original interpolations blending jazz, gospel and classical. Atwater is now the artistic director of the Monterey Jazz Festival — the first African American to hold the position.

Renowned entrepreneur, publisher, philanthropist and advocate of Black business and entrepreneurship, Morgan alumnus Earl G. Graves Sr. graduated from Morgan in 1958 with a B.A. in Economics. Being the founder of Black Enterprise magazine and chairman of the media company Earl G. Graves, Ltd., is central to his powerful legacy. A pillar of business savvy, Earl G. Graves amassed an empire that inspired generations of enterprising Black entrepreneurs. In his honor, Morgan’s B-school bears the Graves name, the Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management.

The Nigerian-born professional wrestler and former Morgan State Bears Men’s Basketball student-athlete is a popular WWE professional wrestler performing under the ring name Omos. A two-time professional wrestling champion, Omos, the tallest wrestler on WWE's active roster, became Raw Tag Team Champion with fellow wrestler AJ Styles in 2021 and is half of the reigning GHC Tag Team Champions in Japan’s Pro Wrestling Noah.

Renowned for her accomplishments as a NASA scientist and inventor of the foundational technology widely used and adapted for 3D imaging in applications ranging from surgery to the production of television and video screens, Valerie L. Thomas, Ed.D., honed her interests in electronics, mathematics, physics and the intricacies of research at Morgan State while earning her degree in Physics with honors as a member of the Class of 1964. Dr. Thomas catapulted her name into the annals of great American scientists and inventors during her 30-year career at NASA, where she developed the image-processing systems for Landsat, the first satellite to send images to the Earth from space, and was awarded a patent for an illusion transmitter, a device that produces optical illusion images via two concave mirrors. Dr. Valerie Thomas is often called the “mother of 3D imaging.”

Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Willie Lanier is revered for being one of the NFL’s most dominant middle linebackers, with career highlights that include leading the Kansas City Chiefs to victory in Super Bowl IV, being inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1986 and earning a selection to the NFL’s 75th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1994. Willie Lanier graduated from Morgan in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Most recently, Lanier served as the Chiefs’ honorary captain at the AFC Championship Game, presenting his former team with the Lamar Hunt Trophy.

An award-winning sportswriter now serving as columnist and editor-at-large for Andscape (formerly ESPN’s The Undefeated), William C. (“Bill”) Rhoden earned his Bachelor of Science in speech communication from Morgan in 1973. Rhoden worked for the Baltimore Afro-American, serving as the newspaper’s sports editor, followed by several years writing at the Baltimore Sun and as a columnist at Ebony Magazine. Rhoden cemented his career as a sportswriter while penning the widely popular column Sports of The Times for The New York Times, from which he retired in 2016. In 2006, he published his first book, “Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete,” analyzing prejudice and intolerance in American professional sports.

Career public servant and the first African American to become the mayor of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Honorable Edward C. Gainey credits Morgan’s solid academic foundation, the bachelor’s degree in business management he earned in 1994 and the strong sense of belonging cultivated at Morgan with laying the groundwork for his future in public service. A visionary leader, Gainey previously served the 24th District as a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.