Ronne Hartfield

She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters by DePaul University in 2006.

Hartfield's full-length memoir, Another Way Home: The Tangled Roots of Race in One Chicago Family (University of Chicago Press, 2004) was a seminal book in the literature of race in America. A biographical memoir, Another Way Home traces the story of Hartfield's mother, Day Shepherd, through her migration to the city of Chicago and her experiences as a mixed-race American. Hartfield draws on her mother's recollections and genealogical research to trace her family roots from a deep-South plantation to a close-knit urban middle-class family. Hartfield's book chronicles crucial moments in African American history, from the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 and the Great Depression to the murder of Emmett Till and the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement. Named by the Chicago Tribune as one of the ten best non-fiction books of 2004, Another Way Home has met with critical acclaim, including praise from Children's Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman, Yale Professor Robert B. Stepto, Harvard's Sara Lawrence Lightfoot, and poet Nikki Giovanni.

From 1999 to the present, Hartfield has been an independent consultant in museum education and planning. Her clients have included The Fetzer Institute, where she convenes an international Arts Advisory Council; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Rubin Museum of Art, New York City; Museum of Biblical Art, New York City; Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School; National Endowment for the Arts; Newberry Library; as well as museums in São Paulo, London and Kyoto.

In 1991, Hartfield became the Woman's Board Endowed Executive Director of Museum Education at The Art Institute of Chicago where she was responsible for all facets of interpretation in the museum, including lectures, film, videos and services to schools and families. Hartfield was instrumental in forming the Leadership Advisory Committee in 1994. The LAC continues to promote and sustain diversity within the AIC, and provides counsel, new perspectives and support to the museum for the advancement and engagement of African Americans in the life of the institution.

From 1974 to 1981, Hartfield served as the Dean of Students and Assistant Professor of the Comparative Literature at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During this time, Hartfield developed national and international exchange study opportunities and fellowships for SAIC students. In 1981, Hartfield became the Executive Director for Urban Gateways: The Center for Arts in Education, a Chicago-based, not-for-profit, arts and education organization that was at the time the largest in the country. Urban Gateways won the Presidential Medal for the Arts, as well as the Governor's Award for the most outstanding arts organization in Illinois.

Ronne attended the University of Chicago for both her undergraduate and master's degree. While obtaining her BA in History (1955), Ronne worked with Honors preceptorial advisor Charles G. Bell. Advisors for her M.A. in Theology and Literature included Langdon Gilkey, Paul Ricoeur and Anthony Yu.

Ronne Hartfield (née Ronola Rone, born Ronola 17, 1936) is an author, essayist, international museum consultant, and a former senior executive at The Art Institute of Chicago and Executive Director of Urban Gateways: The Center for Arts in Education. She has been a co-chair of the Harvard University Arts Education Council and a Senior Research Associate at Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions and Claremont Graduate University School of Religion. In 2004, Hartfield published Another Way Home: The Tangled Roots of Race in One Chicago Family to critical acclaim. Hartfield has served on the board of directors at the American Writers Museum, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in Taliesin, Scottsdale, Arizona, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago. She is an internationally recognized expert in arts education and multicultural education. Ronne's husband, Robert Hartfield, is a mathematician at the University of Chicago. They have four daughters.

Ronne Hartfield was born on March 17, 1936, to John Drayton Rone Sr. and Thelma Shepherd (née Thelma Day), a factory-worker and a homemaker. Her parents emigrated separately from Louisiana to Chicago during the “first wave” of the Great Migration, between 1918 and 1920. Hartfield and her four siblings all attended the landmark Wendell Phillips High School and local universities.