Retired Morris College Mathematics Professor James L. Solomon featured as Mathematically Gifted & Black’s 2021 Black History Month Honoree

March 01, 2021

James L. Solomon

Professor of Mathematics, Morris College (retired)

South Carolina Public Official (retired)

James Solomon was born in 1930 in McDonough, Georgia.  Wanting greater educational opportunities for their son, James’ parents moved the family to Atlanta.  Solomon graduated high school at 16 and attended Morris Brown College for a year. He left college to serve in the Air Force where he was in one of the first black squadrons to be integrated. He served for the duration of the Korean War and was stationed in Okinawa, Japan. After leaving the Air Force, he found himself in Sumter, South Carolina. There he met his wife and completed his college degree at Morris College.  Always in the pursuit of further education, he went on to earn his masters degree in Mathematics from Atlanta University in 1960.  His master’s thesis was titled “Lectures in the theory of functions of a complex variable, Part III.”

Solomon worked as faculty at Morris College from 1960 to 1973. He was hired as an instructor but was rapidly promoted. By the 1970s, he was the college’s Vice-President of Institutional Planning and Research. In addition to his contributions at the collegiate level, Solomon developed and directed an NSF funded program for elementary school teachers which ran for several years.

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