Louis Eugene King

Welcome to the publication, “Representations.” This is a project designed to bring the perspectives of a wider variety of groups to the forefront of the anthropology classroom. To celebrate Black History Month, we are covering the accomplishments of 28 Black anthropologists across 28 days. Learn more about our project; read on for the amazing accomplishments of Louis Eugene King.

Anthropologist, Louis Eugene King, saw anthropology as an opportunity to achieve “cultural vindication” (research used to correct harmful stereotypes). King was far ahead of this time: he was the first Black Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University, he studied under Franz Boas, and he established the idea of “cultural vindication” in the 1930s. Facing both the racism and extreme financial challenges of the Great Depression, King still managed to pursue meaningful anthropological research that offers a helpful perspective on the role of anthropology today.

King is widely considered to be the first anthropologist of any race to study African American communities (Harrison 1999). At that time, it was more popular to study Native Americans, based on the commonly held racist belief was that they were more “advanced” and that people from the African diaspora were not (ibid). Anthropologists today recognize the power that anthropology has to shine a light on systematic oppression while simultaneously offering practical solutions through applied anthropology. All who pursue this line of anthropological study owe a debt of gratitude to Louis Eugene King who first blazed that trial (in spite of great resistance).

One of Louis Eugene King’s major contributions was to debunk the idea that the innate intelligence of people could be determined by a universal metric. In his dissertation, “The Negro Life in Rural Community,” he challenged the prevalent, bigoted misconception white anthropologists popularized that Black people in the northern regions were “smarter” than those in the south. From 1927 to 1931, he conducted his research in West Virginia, which was the northernmost state still considered “southern.” King’s groundbreaking argument was that the results of an “intelligence test” could not be considered valid without considering the cultural context and environment of the test subject. An objective test of innate intelligence would have to take these factors into account.

Tragically, from letters and other records of the time, we know that Louis Eugene King was initially denied his Ph.D. in anthropology because his brilliant mind was simply not embraced by an institution that still functioned within a framework of white superiority. In spite of receiving influential backing from Franz Boas, King’s reputation was still impacted by the prejudicial worldview of other professors from that institution at the time. Specifically, because he wrote his dissertation in the middle of the Great Depression, King’s lack of funding to create and distribute 27 copies of the dissertation — a requirement for receiving a doctorate in anthropology — impeded him from receiving his well-deserved Ph.D.

In 1934, King was briefly employed as the first black historian at Gettysburg National Military Park but was eventually let go based on lack of funds. Then, in 1942, he held a pick and shovel job at the Naval Supply Depot in Pennsylvania. When he tried to quit, dissatisfied with the job given his education and ability, the commanding officer persuaded him to stay on as a management analyst. Soon after, the officer realized that King had never received his Ph.D. despite completing his dissertation. King explained the situation to him, and the officer contacted Columbia University on his behalf and had a secretary create three copies of King’s dissertation, the new requirement. Thirty years after his fieldwork and dissertation, in 1965, King finally received his doctorate from Columbia.

Louis Eugene King was born in 1898 in Barbados, the youngest of nine, and was orphaned as a child. After the death of his parents, he was partly raised by his sister and her husband, but moved frequently and had no constant ‘home’ to speak of. He came to New York in 1906 and subsequently attended public schools. In 1918–1919, he majored in pedagogy at Storres College in West Virginia. After a year of teaching, he became a general studies major at Howard University from 1920 to 1924. Here he quickly gained a reputation as an outstanding debater, and he was editor of the student newspaper. He started medical school at Howard in 1924, but soon had to drop out and work as a history teacher to support his family.

Among his many accomplishments, King received the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Grant in 1952 and — after a brief career as an educator — Gettysburg College created an award in his honor.

We can look at the life and achievements of Louis Eugene King as an example of how the cultural circumstances surrounding an anthropologist can impact access to opportunity. As modern anthropologists and anthropology students strive to uncover meaningful work from anthropologists who have been systematically marginalized, we can consider the discrimination faced by King and how he turned his unique understanding of prejudice into a new framework within which future anthropologists could pursue study.

Bibliography

Harrison, Ira E. “Louis Eugene King, the Anthropologist Who Never Was.” African-American Pioneers in Anthropology, by Faye Venetia Harrison and Ira E. Harrison, University of Illinois Press, 1999.

“Louis Eugene King.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, March 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Eugene_King.

Photo credit: ABA

Written by Charlie Lanza and Amanda Zunner-Keating, Los Angeles Pierce College.