Walter Farrell

Professor Walter C. Farrell, Jr. was born on June 2, 1945 in Raleigh, North Carolina to Lucinda Woods Farrell and Walter C. Farrell, Sr. He received his B.A. degree in geography and education in 1967 from North Carolina College at Durham (later North Carolina Central University), his M.A. degree in 1970 and his Ph.D. degree in 1974 in urban and social geography from Michigan State University, and his M.S.P.H. degree in 1980 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Farrell began his career in education teaching English, geography, and social studies in Sussex, Virginia. In 1974, he became chair of the Department of Economics and Geography at Prairie View A & M University. Then Farrell joined the Department of Urban Studies at Cheyney State University in 1976, becoming chair of the department in 1977. In 1978, Farrell joined the faculty of the Department of Educational Policy and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which he chaired from 1978 to 1982 and from 1988 to 1992. In 1998, he was named a fellow in the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Farrell then was hired as a professor of social work, adjunct professor of public policy, and fellow in the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1999, where he taught until his retirement in 2015. Farrell heads a management, education, and litigation consultant group and has published more than 160 journal articles, essays, and book chapters on K-12 education, school privatization, diversity, social and immigration issues, and the death penalty.

Farrell has served as vice president of the board of the Council for the Spanish Speaking in Milwaukee, secretary of the Wisconsin Alliance Concerned with School-Age Parents, chair of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Advisory Committee for the Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services, chair of the Advisory Board on Community Education for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, president of the Milwaukee Afro-American Council, chair of HealthReach, president of the Mental Health Association in Milwaukee County, director of the Milwaukee Area Boy Scouts Council, director of the Community Investment Corporation of Firstar Bank in Milwaukee, member of the National Commission on Unemployment and Mental Health of the National Mental Health Association, member of Wisconsin’s Equal Justice Task Force, member of Wisconsin's Glass Ceiling Commission on Gender and Race Equity in Employment, member of the Urban Advisory Task Force of the National PTA, chair of the executive committee of the National Urban Education Association, and vice president for programs of the National Mental Health Association.

Farrell received the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association’s Don Feilbach Friend of Public Education Award and the Outstanding Community Service Award from the League of United Latin American Citizens in 1996.

Farrell and his wife, Paula Howze, live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Walter C. Farrell, Jr. was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on August 23, 2022.