John Langston Gwaltney

Abstract

This chapter offers an overview of John Langston Gwaltney’s personal life and his work as a scholar, teacher, writer, ritual wood carver, and native anthropologist. It also explores the complex factors that enabled him to overcome the challenges of being blind from birth and undertake fieldwork under the guidance of Margaret Mead. It also explores his contributions to a core black ethnography and drylongso (a black English term meaning “ordinary” or “not unusual”) and to African American museology. He maintained that a “core black culture” existed in the US, centered around large family groups and church affiliations, and that it included communal responsibility, tolerance, conviviality, awareness of repression, and a rich language.