Dr. Carol A. Lancaster Meeks has received the Humanitarian Award from the Rev. O. C. Dumas Scholarship Board to recognize her life of helping and serving others.
The presentation was made Nov. 20 at Soldiers’ Memorial AME Zion Church in Salisbury. Meeks received the award for her service to the community and in career in education.
Clara A. Dumas, the wife of the late Rev. O. C. Dumas, senior presiding elder of the West Central North Carolina Conference of the AME Zion Church, presented the award along with her son, Alexander C. Dumas.
Clara Dumas recognized Meeks for being a caring and hard-working person as a young adult and for remaining that way — and maintaining regular contact with the elderly in the community — when she returned to work in her hometown after receiving a Ph.D. from Florida State University.
In the community, Meeks served as president of the Salisbury-Rowan Human Relations Council and trustee-director of Christian education and member of appointed committees and lay organizations for Soldiers’ Memorial.
A longtime educator, Meeks is a former college and university associate professor of English, foreign language education and public speech and a former administrator.
While serving as director of grants management, she also initiated and served as the director of the Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning Program (now The Evening and Weekend College) for Livingstone College.
In 2004-05, Meeks was named Teacher of the Year for Henderson High School. In 2005, she received the Pioneers in Education Award from the College of Education of Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla.
Meeks retired from Rowan-Salisbury Schools in 2008, and since then, she has worked part time at Livingstone College while she continues to do editing for Eagle Consultants.
Meeks is the mother of Abigail M. (Stewart II) Mitchell and the grandmother of Stewart S. Mitchell III and Peyton Malia Mitchell of Colorado. She is the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Spencer W. Lancaster of Salisbury.