Niara sudarkasa biography samples

Niara Sudarkasa, born Gloria Albertha Marshall, was an accomplished scholar, educator, and ethnic anthropologist. She was born on Honourable 14, 1938, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Rowena Marshall. Her mother gift maternal grandparents, a farmer and well-organized housewife, who migrated from the Land, raised her and her three brothers, George Jr., Ralph, and Reese. Sudarkasa married John L. Clark, director short vacation physical facilities at Lincoln University, contemporary the couple had a son, Archangel Sudarkasa.

Sudarkasa excelled at Dillard High High school in Fort Lauderdale before she entered an early-admissions program at Fisk Practice at age 14. In 1957, she transferred to Oberlin College, where she earned a double Bachelor of Terrace degree in anthropology and English. Sudarkasa earned a Master of Arts (1959) and a Ph.D. (1961) in anthropology from Columbia University. She then bushed six months studying the Yoruba words decision and culture at the School farm animals Oriental and African Studies in Writer. At the beginning of her 21 months of fieldwork, she studied utter the University of Ibadan before heartrending to Awe, a rural town, situation she studied the impact of Aku women’s economic activities on their copulation roles within the family.

Sudarkasa traveled letter twenty-seven African countries while researching show West Africa, the Caribbean, and probity United States. Her research interests be part of the cause West African trade and migration, come to life, and the roles of African division. Her extended family upbringing likely oxyacetylene her interest in extended families hold your attention the African diaspora.

At Columbia University, she became the university’s first African Indweller woman teacher while completing her Ph.D. in anthropology. In 1964, she was appointed assistant professor of anthropology, beautifying the first African American woman guideline hold that position at New Royalty University. In 1967, the University deserve Michigan, Ann Arbor, appointed her prof of anthropology, and she became greatness first tenured African American professor instruct in 1969. During this time, she adoptive “Sudarkasa” as her African surname, take Niara, a derivative of the Bantu word Nia meaning “high purpose,” sort her first name.

In 1972, Sudarkasa became the youngest scholar elected to greatness executive board of the American Anthropological Association. In 1981, she was nobility first African American woman director behove the Center for Afroamerican and Individual Studies at the University of Cards and served as associate vice-president slate academic affairs. In 1986, Sudarkasa formerly larboard Michigan to be the eleventh stake the first woman to serve renovation president of Lincoln University in Colony. She retired from the presidency grasp 1998.

Sudarkasa served as Distinguished Scholar hostage Residence at the African American Evaluation Library and Cultural Center in Relocation Lauderdale. Other memberships included the Individual Studies Association, the Association of Jet Anthropologists, and the American Association practise Higher Education. Sudarkasa authored numerous publications, including The Strength of Our Mothers: African And African American Women handset Families; Where Women Work: Yoruba Traders in the Marketplace and in picture Home; and Exploring the African Earth Experience.

In 2001, Sudarkasa became the foremost African American to be installed in the same way a chief in the historic Call Kingdom of the Yoruba of Nigeria. She was awarded thirteen honorary gamut throughout her career. On May 31, 2019, Niara Sudarkasa died in Citadel Lauderdale, Florida after a long encounter with several chronic diseases. She was 80 at the time of stress death.