Black Anthropologists in the Southern Region¹

The Association of Black Anthropologists: A Brief History

“…Ira organized, chaired, and presented papers on Afro‐American anthropology and anthropologists at the Southern Anthropological Society meetings in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1979, and Louisville, Kentucky, 1980 (Harrison 1979a, b:10, Harrison 1980:15; Southern Anthropological Association 1979:11, 1980). Undergraduate students like Louise Skinner, graduate students like Fredia Glenn, Steven Jones, Doris Derby, and Linda Weber, newly minted Ph.D.'s like Janice Stockard‐Anderson; junior‐level professors like Yvonne Jones, Tony Whitehead, and Annie Barnes, and a pioneer Black Anthropologist professor Hubert B. Ross, of Atlanta University—all these were involved in presenting papers, discussion of issues concerning Black students and anthropology, and building the ABA (Harrison 1979a, b:10, Harrison 1980:15; Southern Anthropological Association 1979:11, 1980). This activity earned Ira the reputation as a model ABA regional representative (Green 1978:4, 6; Jordan 1982: 812, 10).…”

“…In 1977, Ira surveyed colleges and universities in the southern region identifying four Black anthropologists. Ira Harrison and Marilyn Wells presented the results of that survey in the paper, “The Distribution of Black Anthropologists in the Southern Region—A Dateline Indicator for Social Change” in Lexington, Kentucky, at the annual Southern Anthropological Society meeting (Harrison 1979a; Southern Anthropological Association 1979:11). He met Yvonne Jones and Tony Whitehead, and they discussed their research interests and ABA.…”

“…Black graduate students in the 1960s sought identifiable Afro-American role models in Anthropology. They were virtually nonexistent in academia before the sixties (Drake 1978(Drake , 1984Harrison 1979a;Steward 1982). Only 13 Blacks earned the doctorate in anthropology before 1980.…”