Melville J. Herskovits

Melville Jean Herskovits
Honestly, I don't know anything about this guy, but I read a few things and thought his life was notable, and his work, laudable, so I'm going to take the opportunity to draw some broad strokes, which may be completely off base in his praise. It may be the case that he was an accidental racist. he may have damaged the cause of Blacks. He may have harbored horrible opinions, but I don't think so. From what I have gathered in my cursory summary and investigation, the net effect of Herkovits was positive.

The fact that he was a White man and he was the first professor to head an African Studies department, could be viewed with skepticism and deridement. However, this may not be the most prudent course. it seems to me that he was earnestly and responsibly interested in African as well as African-American culture as well as fascinated by the African Diaspora. It is based upon these threads and beliefs that i will engage in some discussion, and speculation about the contributions and ideas of Melville Herskovits.

A truly great and pioneering individual. He achieved a great amount of work in his life and helped to humanize all peoples through the recognition of their common humanity, which further defined and refined one another through their shared understanding.

In reading about him, I found that several years back, I'd reached the same conclusion that he'd reached concerning the American 'Negro', which is, The American Negro need not look to Africa for direction, or definition of self. For in America, their culture had become amazingly relevant and specific to their needs. In their shaping, in what was kept, in what persisted, in what had been lost, they had formed a culture uniquely American, and appropriate to their situation. The "Myth of the Negro Past" as explored by Herskovits, whose thesis is that the negro does have a past, illustrates that the past can inform, and provide vital clues to the current state of Black culture. This may sound contradictory, yet the difference between what Herskovits and Dubois and Carter G. Woodson believed, was that Dubois and Woodson held a much more romantic view towards black history. they were concerned with the uplift of the Black population. They believed that the Black American could achieve and learn from European Culture, but ultimately, that the Negro was wholly separate.

The subtlety once again as eludicated by Herkovits, is that he saw the interchange and and adoption of Eurocentric values, as a natural process of cultural assimilation... a process which had been going on throughout the world and throughout cultures.

Herskovits believed that cultures are defined by the stress and strain through a process of change, or huge culturally impacting event, such as the African Diaspora. And finally, Herskovits believed that Cultures are as much influenced and fluid in how they change, as much as how they remain the same, and that all areas of culture, from music, religion, economics, family structure, langage, traditions.. are important in the overall as well as specific analysis.

As Herkovits delved into Black culture, he gradually began to look more like Dubois and Woodson in his beliefs. He also believed that the uplift of the people and culture, vs. academic understanding, was a major influence and motivation in his studies.

In any event, the addition of Herkovits, a trained anthropologist into the discussion of black culture, was a welcome counterpoint to the prevailing opinions of the day. As is often the case, W.E.B. DuBois, Carter G. Woodson, John Hope Franklin Herkovits and others helped to refine and define one another through their dialogue and debate.

If these ideas seem obvious and shared today, it is only due to the pioneering work and preaching of the anthropological gospel of Dubois, Woodson, Frazier and Herskovits.

I hope to read more about him, and thoroughly review his works in further blogs in the future.

what follows is a compilation of several online sources, a biography, 'Melville J. Herkovits and the racial politics of knowledge' and the following sources:


1. 'A Biographical Memoir' by Joseph C. Greenberg
2. Encyclopedia Brittanica online
3. Wikipedia - Melville J. Herskovits

born Sept. 10, 1895, Bellefontaine, Ohio, U.S.
died Feb. 25, 1963, Evanston, Ill.
American anthropologist noted for having opened up the study of the “New World Negro” as a new field of research. Herskovits was also known for his humanistic and relativistic writings on culture.

Herskovits took his Ph.B. at the University of Chicago (1920) and his M.A. (1921) and Ph.D. (1923) at Columbia University, where he came under the influence of Franz Boas. Herskovits was a lecturer in anthropology at Columbia and Howard University before moving in 1927 to Northwestern University, where he remained until his death. In 1951 he was named there to the first professorial chair of African studies in the United States.

From his initial studies of the African American as a physical type, Herskovits was led to an interest in their social problems and to their cultural roots in Africa. He systematically attacked some widely held myths in The Myth of the Negro Past (1941) and also opposed the assumption that Africa must follow the Western model and remain under the continuous direction of Europeans.

In 1948, he founded the first major interdisciplinary American program in African studies at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois with a three-year, $30,000 grant from the Carnegie Foundation, followed by a five-year, $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation in 1951. The Program of African Studies was the first of its kind at an American academic institution. [1] The goals of the program were to “produce scholars of competence in their respective subjects, who will focus the resources of their special fields on the study of aspects of African life relevant to their disciplines.”

The Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University, established in 1954, is the largest separate Africana collection in the world. To date, it contains more than 260,000 bound volumes, including 5,000 rare books, more than 3,000 periodicals, journals and newspapers, archival and manuscript collections, 15,000 books in 300 different African languages, extensive collections of maps, posters, videos and photographs, as well as electronic resources. [3] In 1957, Herskovits founded the African Studies Association and was the organization's first president.

Herskovits's controversial classic The Myth of the Negro Past is about African cultural influences on American blacks. He rejected the notion that African Americans lost all traces of their past when they were taken from Africa and enslaved in America. Herskovits emphasized race as a sociological concept, not a biological one. He also helped forge the concept of cultural relativism, particularly in his book Man and His Works.

Melville Herskovits's position formed one half of the debate with Franklin Frazier on the nature of cultural contact in the Western Hemisphere, specifically with reference to Africans, Europeans, and their descendants.

After World War II, Herskovits publicly advocated African independence and also attacked American politicians for viewing Africa as an object of Cold War strategy.

Herskovits also had interests in economics (especially in relation to anthropology) and African folk art and music. His major works include The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples (1940; 2nd ed. published as Economic Anthropology, 1952); Man and His Works (1948; rev. and abridged as Cultural Anthropology, 1955); Franz (1953); and The Human Factor in Changing Africa (1962).