RONALD WILLIAMS ENGLISH
Ronald W. English migrated from the red clay hills of Georgia to the black coal hills of West Virginia in 1972 when he was called to the pastorate of the First Baptist Church of Charleston where he served from 1972-1993. He had acknowledged the call to Ministry the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where he was licensed and ordained and served as Assistant Minister to Drs. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sr. In this capacity he offered the prayer at the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (April,1968).
Among achievements at First Baptist, he led the church to become a Charter Member of the Religious Coalition for Community Renewal (RCCR) which established low income housing in downtown Charleston and he founded the Black Heritage Cultural Series as the first such project funded by the WV Arts and Humanities Council and the Division of Culture and History.
Ronald English earned his undergraduate degree from Morehouse College ('67) and the Master of Divinity Degree from the Interdenominational Theological Center ('70). After graduating from ITC, he served as special assistant to the President as Director of Public Relations and established the office of Alumni Affairs at ITC .
From 1994 to 1998, he was employed as Corrections Unit Manager for the West Virginia Division of Corrections and was on the administrative team that opened the new Mount Olive Correctional Complex, the state's maximum security prison for adult offenders located in Fayette County WV.
As a lifelong learner, English has done post graduate work at Marshall University and has received counseling certification from the Kanawha Pastoral Counseling Center (Charleston), along with further studies in leadership and diversity management from several institutions including the Center for Creative Leadership (Greensboro, NC) and the American Institute on Managing Diversity (Atlanta, GA).
He has lectured and written extensively on African- American history, particularly on the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. His international travels include sojourns to Europe, the Middle East, Far East and participated in a delegation of African American leaders invited by Bishop Desmond Tutu to South Africa on the release of Nelson Mandela.
English was the Founder and Project Director for the 2007 KingDay Conference on Managing Diversity co-sponsored by the American Institute on Managing Diversity and the University of Charleston. This program served as the forerunner to the inaugural class of WV Diversity Leadership Academy which was initiated in August 2008.
He has also moderated and produced public affairs programs for commercial and public television has also been featured in radio and television commercials for local and national media. As a writer, his op-ed articles have appeared in newspapers and scholarly journals. Currently, English is a RESA III certified adult educator, a substitute Teacher in the Kanawha County School System and an adjunct Instructor in Leadership Studies at Wheeling Jesuit University.
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