Rodney, Walter Anthony, 1942-1980

Walter Rodney (1942-1980), Pan-Africanist historian and educator, was a highly respected intellectual who personified the "scholar-activist." A prolific writer, Dr. Rodney authored nine books and over fifty articles, chapters, and book reviews during the brief 13 year period between 1967 and his untimely death in 1980. Walter Rodney is widely known for his seminal work,How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, first published in 1972. It has been translated into Portuguese, German, and Japanese, and is used as a text in numerous colleges and universities in the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Walter Rodney believed that education and history should be used as a tool for social change. Recognized for his scholarship and teaching on African and Caribbean history, Dr. Rodney is equally revered for his political activism. A popular lecturer with college and university students and at academic conferences and symposia, Dr. Rodney extended his teaching beyond academic settings to the broader community, making a specific effort to reach out to the working class and the disenfranchised. He spoke to school children, community groups, workers, labor unions, and at political forums and rallies. He traveled extensively, lecturing and teaching in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and North America.

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