One of the NAACP’s top honors this year will go to a Beloit native with strong Dane County ties who last year made history by becoming the Army’s first African-American woman promoted to two-star general.
Maj. Gen. Marcia Anderson is to receive the Benjamin L. Hooks Distinguished Service Award next week during the annual National Association for the Advancement of Colored People convention in Houston.
The award was first given in 1990 in recognition of the Hooks’ service in the 92nd Infantry Division during WWII. He was the NAACP’s sixth executive director.
Anderson was born in Beloit. Her family moved to East St. Louis, Ill., when she was in the second grade.
She moved back to Wisconsin in 1998 to take the job of clerk of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Madison.
She was a member of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs board from 2008 to 2010, including a stint as chairwoman.
Anderson’s 31-year military career started when she signed up for Army ROTC as a student at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb.
She stayed with the military, fulfilling an eight-year commitment before re-enlisting in the reserves.
When she wasn’t on active duty, Anderson lived in Verona with her husband, Amos Anderson.
In 2010 she was promoted to brigadier general — which made her the Army’s highest ranking African-American woman — and assigned to the full-time post of deputy commanding general of the Human Resources Command at Fort Knox in Kentucky.
With her promotion last year, she moved to the office of the chief of the U.S. Army Reserve in Washington, D.C.
She has said that when she retires from the military, she plans to move back to Verona.
www.madison.com/wsj
(AP Photo/The News Enterprise, Jill Pickett)
