Year Honored: 2018

Birth: 1926 -

Born in: Delaware

Biography

Reba Ross Hollingsworth, Ph.D., of Dover was born in Milford, Delaware, on October 26, 1926, the daughter, and second eldest of seven children, of Solomon and Rachel Shockley Ross. Her family is distantly related to that of famed abolitionist Harriet Ross Tubman, who was born a slave in neighboring Dorchester County, Maryland.

Dr. Hollingsworth was educated in the segregated elementary schools of Milford and as a teenager attended the Delaware State College Laboratory High School in Dover, which was then the only educational institution in Kent and Sussex Counties that provided high school instruction beyond the 8th grade to African American students. Upon earning her high school diploma in 1945, she matriculated at Delaware State College, where in 1949 she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in home economics. While still in college, Dr. Hollingsworth married Berlin N. Hollingsworth. Her husband of more than 68 years passed away in 2016.

Dr. Hollingsworth taught in the public schools of South Carolina and Delaware, retiring from her position as guidance counselor at Dover High School. Having come from old and prominent black Delmarva forebears, and growing up in southern Delaware in an age of overt racism, Dr. Hollingsworth has long been an informed and close observer of, and sometime participant in, the quest for Civil Rights in Delaware and beyond.

Dr. Hollingsworth is a life member of the NAACP, past president of the African American Historical Society of Delaware and long-time member, and Vice Chair of the Delaware Heritage Commission, to which she was first appointed by Governor Michael N. Castle in 1987 and has been reappointed by every governor since.

Among her many honors and awards is the Governor’s Heritage Award, which was bestowed on her by Governor Ruth Ann Minner in 2007. Over the years, she has been an extremely active alumna of her alma mater, Delaware State University, which in 2017 named its new student counseling center in her honor. In 2020, Dr. Hollingsworth received the Richard Allen Coalition Award. Hollingsworth is also a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
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Sources and Additional Reading

Archivists, D. S. U. (1970, January 1). Dr. Reba Hollingsworth. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://dsuarchives.blogspot.com/2017/08/dr-reba-hollingsworth.html.

Dr. Reba Ross Hollingsworth Counseling Center Celebrated. Delaware State University. (2017, November 22). Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://www.desu.edu/news/2017/11/dr-reba-ross-hollingsworth-counseling-center-celebrated.

Moderator, M. W. W. (2020, August 27). Reba Hollingsworth. Marquis Who's Who Top Health Care Professionals. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://marquistophealthcareproviders.com/2020/08/27/reba-hollingsworth/.

Oates, M. (2021, September 27). Voices of Delaware Black History: Reba Ross Hollingsworth. Vimeo. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://vimeo.com/386098354.