Guinier, Ewart

Labor leader, former presidential candidate for the Borough of Manhattan, and the first chairman of Harvard University's Department of African American Studies. Born in Panama of West Indian parents in 1910, Ewart Guinier migrated to the United States in 1925 and studied at Harvard University, the City University of New York, Columbia University and New York University. He became the International Secretary of the United Public Workers of America in 1940, and was the Liberal Party candidate for the presidency of the Borough of Manhattan in 1949. In the 1930s, Guinier helped organize community efforts to break the traditional pattern of lily-white employment in the main shopping district in Harlem and to open jobs for African Americans in New York's public transportion system. An active figure in progressive and labor circles, he served as vice-president of the National Negro Labor Council in the 1950s, and also worked with the National Urban League, the Harlem Affairs Committee and the Jamaica Coordinating Council. He served as the first chairman of the African American Studies Department at Harvard University from 1969 to 1976, and held a full professorship until his retirement in 1980. Ewart Guinier died in 1990.

From the guide to the Ewart Guinier papers, 1910-1989, (The New York Public Library. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division.)

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