Melville J. Herskovits facts for kids

Melville Jean Herskovits (born September 10, 1895 – died February 25, 1963) was an American anthropologist. An anthropologist is a scientist who studies human cultures, both past and present. Herskovits helped start the study of African cultures and the history of people of African descent living outside Africa, known as African Diaspora studies, in American universities.

He is famous for showing how African cultures continued to influence African-American communities. He often worked with his wife, Frances (Shapiro) Herskovits, who was also an anthropologist. They traveled and studied together in South America, the Caribbean, and Africa. They wrote many books and reports together.

Early Life and Education

Melville Herskovits was born in Bellefontaine, Ohio, in 1895. His parents were Jewish immigrants. He went to public schools in his hometown. During World War I, he served in the United States Army Medical Corps in France.

After the war, he went to college. He earned a degree from the University of Chicago in 1920. Then, he moved to New York City to continue his studies. He earned his master's and Ph.D. degrees in anthropology from Columbia University. His teacher was Franz Boas, a famous German-born American anthropologist. Anthropology was a new field of study at that time.

His Ph.D. paper was called The Cattle Complex in East Africa. In it, he explored how owning and raising cattle showed power and authority in parts of Africa. He also studied how some African traditions and culture were seen in African American culture in the 1900s.

Some of his classmates became famous anthropologists too. These included Katherine Dunham, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Elsie Clews Parsons, and Frances Shapiro. Melville and Frances got married in Paris in 1924. They later had a daughter, Jean Herskovits, who became a historian.

Career and Research

In 1927, Herskovits became a full-time anthropologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. In 1928 and 1929, he and his wife Frances did fieldwork in Suriname. They studied the Saramaka people and wrote a book about them.

In 1934, the Herskovitses spent over three months in Mirebalais, a village in Haiti. Melville published their findings in his 1937 book Life in a Haitian Valley. This book was seen as a very accurate description of the Haitian practice of Vodou. They carefully wrote down the daily lives and Vodou practices of the people in Mirebalais. They also did fieldwork in Benin, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria, and Trinidad. In 1938, Herskovits started the new Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University.

In the early 1940s, the Herskovitses met Barbara Hadley Stein in Brazil. She was researching the end of slavery there. She introduced them to Stanley J. Stein, a student of Latin American history. With advice from Herskovits, the Steins began recording Jongo songs. These songs later gained scholarly attention. Herskovits also influenced Alan Lomax, who collected African American songs.

In 1948, Herskovits started the first big program in African studies in the United States at Northwestern University. This program brought together different subjects to study Africa. It received grants from the Carnegie Foundation and the Ford Foundation. The goal was to train experts who could use their skills to study different parts of African life.

The Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University opened in 1954. It is the largest collection of materials about Africa in the world. It has over 260,000 books, including rare ones, and many newspapers, maps, photos, and digital resources. In 1957, Herskovits founded the African Studies Association and was its first president.

Herskovits's book The Myth of the Negro Past explored how African cultures influenced African Americans. He disagreed with the idea that African Americans lost all their past traditions when they were brought from Africa and enslaved. He found many parts of modern African-American culture that came from African cultures.

Herskovits believed that race was a social idea, not a biological one. He also helped develop the idea of cultural relativism. This means understanding a culture based on its own rules, not judging it by another culture's standards. His book Man and His Works looked at how Western culture affected Africans who were brought to the Americas as slaves. These people then created a new, unique African-American culture because of this change.

Herskovits had discussions with sociologist E. Franklin Frazier. Frazier focused on how Africans adapted to their new lives in the Americas. Herskovits, however, wanted to show how African cultures continued to exist in the present communities.

After World War II, Herskovits publicly supported the independence of African nations from colonial rule. He thought American politicians should not see African nations just as part of Cold War strategies. He often advised the government. He served on the Mayor's Committee on Race Relations in Chicago (1945) and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1959–60).

Legacy and Honors

• The Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University is named in his honor. It grew from the materials he collected.
• The Herskovits Prize (Melville J. Herskovits Award) is given each year by the African Studies Association. It honors the best scholarly book about Africa published in English in the previous year.

Works

• The Cattle Complex in East Africa, 1926
• "The Negro's Americanism", in Alain Locke (ed.), The New Negro, 1925
• On the Relation Between Negro-White Mixture and Standing in Intelligence Tests, 1926
• The American Negro, 1928
• Rebel Destiny, Among the Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana, 1934, with Frances Herskovits
• Suriname Folk Lore, 1936, with Frances Herskovits
• Life in a Haitian Valley, 1937
• Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom (2 vols), 1938
• Economic Life of Primitive People, 1940
• The Myth of the Negro Past, 1941
• Trinidad Village, 1947, with Frances Herskovits
• Man and His Works: The Science of Cultural Anthropology, 1948
• Les bases de L'Anthropologie Culturelle, Payot, Paris, 1952
• Dahomean Narrative: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, 1958, with Frances Herskovits
• Continuity and Change in African Culture, 1959
• The Human Factor in Changing Africa, 1962
• Economic Transition in Africa, 1964