Reginald Watson

Originally from Morristown, NJ, Reginald Watson now lives in Greenville, NC. Watson holds a B.A. in English from North Carolina Central University, an M.A. from East Carolina University, and a Ph.D. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is an associate professor of English at East Carolina University, is the first African American male to gain tenure in the history of the ECU English Department, is a member of that department’s multi-cultural and ethnic studies committees. He is an advisor to the magazine Expressions of ECU.

Watson is currently working on a scholarly book that deals with biracial characters in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century. He has published several journal articles as well as three plays: A Black History Play, the Kwanzaa Story; I’ve Seen The Mountaintop But it Don’t Look so Good, a play about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s resurrection; and The Princeville Play: A History, which written for fourth-graders in Rocky Mount, Tarboro, and Princeville, North Carolina. Watson founded a student theatrical group at ECU called the Thespians of Diversity.

Active in the Greenville community, Watson was recently appointed to serve on the Housing Authority of the City of Greenville and recently stepped down as the first African American chairman of the state-wide voting rights organization Democracy NC. He now holds an honorary ex-officio position at that organization. He is a NAACP member, has lectured as a North Carolina Humanities Council Road Scholar, and serves on the steering committee of the Freedom Monument Project.

An Army veteran, Watson has several medals, including two Army Commendation Medals. Among his other awards, he is the recipient of the NAACP Legacy Award, the Centennial Award and Medal for Outstanding Service, and Outstanding Service Awards from ECU.