Clarke, John Henrik, 1915-1998

Born in 1915, the oldest son of an Alabama sharecropper family, John Henrik Clarke was a self-trained historian who edited and wrote over thirty books, and was a leading figure in the development of African heritage and black studies programs nationwide.

He was a co-founder of the Harlem Quarterly (1949-1951) and an associate editor of the journal Freedomways. During the 1960s, he served as director of the African Heritage unit of the anti-poverty program Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU-ACT), and as special consultant and coordinator of the Columbia University-WCBS television series "Black Heritage." He joined the Department of Black and Puerto-Rican Studies at Hunter College in 1969. The founding president of the African Heritage Studies Association, he was a consultant to many projects, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition "Harlem On My Mind" and the Portal Press Springboards series, "The Negro in American History." He was awarded the Phelps-Stokes Fund's Aggrey Medal in 1994 for his role "as a public philosopher and relentless critic of injustice and inequality." John Henrik Clarke died in 1998.

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