The first Jeanne M. Spurlock Minority Fellowship Achievement Award was presented at a reception at APA's 2000 annual meeting in Chicago in May. Patricia Ordorica, M.D., the chair of the selection committee, presents the award to Sharon Dennis, one of Spurlock's sisters. Also attending the reception were Joyce Jones, another of Spurlock's sisters, and a nephew, Judge Oliver Spurlock. The award was presented to Jeanne Spurlock's family in recognition of her dedication and commitment to the minority fellowship.

Spurlock died in November 1999. For 25 years, until she retired in 1991, Spurlock was a deputy medical director of APA and headed its Office of Minority and National Affairs. She had also maintained a private practice and was a clinical professor of psychiatry at the medical schools of George Washington and Howard universities.

Those who spoke at the presentation ceremony included APA Deputy Medical Director James Thompson, M.D., Leah Dickstein, M.D., of the University of Louisville; and former minority fellows Robert T.M. Phillips, M.D., Ph.D., a forensic psychiatrist in Annapolis, Md.; Irma Bland, M.D., of Louisiana State University, New Orleans; and F.M. Baker, M.D., of the John A. Burns School of Medicine, Honolulu, Hawaii.