Doris Y. Wilkinson

Doris Yvonne Wilkinson (born 1936) is a sociologist from Lexington, Kentucky who was an instigator of racial integration at the University of Kentucky as the first African American to graduate from the University of Kentucky in 1958 as an undergraduate student. And in 1969 Wilkinson was the first African American woman to become a full-time faculty member at University of Kentucky when she joined the Department of Sociology.
Wilkinson is known for her foundational work in sociology on critical race theory and the sociology of health and illness.

Doris Y. Wilkinson was born in 1936 in Lexington, Kentucky to Howard T. and Regina L. Wilkinson. She grew up in Lexington, and attend Dunbar High School graduating in 1954. Wilkinson attended the University of Kentucky and graduated with a BA in Sociology in 1958.

Wilkinson earned a M.A. in sociology from Western Reserve University in 1960 and a Ph.D. in Medical Sociology from Case Western Reserve University in 1968. In 1985, she earned a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.

Wilkinson enrolled in University of Kentucky in Lexington in 1954 a few months after the United States Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education ruling. She was in the first group of African American students to graduate from University of Kentucky as an undergraduate student when she earned her BA in Sociology in 1958.

After earning her doctorate in Medical Sociology, in 1969 Wilkinson was the first African American woman to become a full-time faculty member at University of Kentucky when she joined the Department of Sociology.

Wilkinson was a leader in the field of Sociology including holding positions of President of the Eastern Sociological Society, Vice President of the American Sociological Association, President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and President of the District of Columbia Sociological Society.