The Second Generation of African American Pioneers in Anthropology

After the pioneers, the second generation of African American anthropologists trained in the late 1950s and 1960s. Expected to study their own or similar cultures, these scholars often focused on the African diaspora but in some cases they also ranged further afield both geographically and intellectually. Yet their work remains largely unknown to colleagues and students. This volume collects intellectual biographies of fifteen accomplished African American anthropologists of the era. The authors explore the scholars' diverse backgrounds and interests and look at their groundbreaking methodologies, ethnographies, and theories. They also place their subjects within their tumultuous times, when antiracism and anticolonialism transformed the field and the emergence of ideas around racial vindication brought forth new worldviews. Scholars profiled: George Clement Bond, Johnnetta B. Cole, James Lowell Gibbs Jr., Vera Mae Green, John Langston Gwaltney, Ira E. Harrison, Delmos Jones, Diane K. Lewis, Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, Oliver Osborne, Anselme Remy, William Alfred Shack, Audrey Smedley, Niara Sudarkasa, and Charles Preston Warren II

Ira E. Harrison is a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Tennessee and a coeditor of African-American Pioneers in Anthropology. Deborah Johnson-Simon is the founder and CEO of the Center for the Study of African and African Diaspora Museums and Communities. Erica Lorraine Williams is an associate professor of anthropology at Spelman College and the author of Sex Tourism in Bahia: Ambiguous Entanglements.