Niara Sudarkasa

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. In recognition of often-overlooked Women’s History, we are covering the accomplishments of female anthropologists. Learn more about our project; read on for the amazing accomplishments of Niara Sudarkasa.

Niara Sudarkasa was an African American anthropologist who focused her publications and research on African culture and women. Sudarkasa received her Masters of Arts, and then later her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Colombia University. Throughout her career, she was often “the first” woman to receive job positions, titles, and honors as a black woman.

In her fieldwork, Sudarkasa committed focused on gender roles in African families, as well as migration and development studies. During her research, Sudarkasa was fascinated with Yoruba Women traders. The book she published based on her dissertation at Colombia was called Where Women Work: A Study of Yoruba Women in the Marketplace and in the Home (1973). She argues that women in Yoruba at the time were able to have a “career” as well as motherhood due to the expectation that they would somehow be involved in some kind of professional occupation. Therefore, mothers were not expected to be the sole caregiver to children, so it was socially acceptable for other women to help teach young children to be self-sufficient from a young age. In her published works, she emphasizes the importance of seniority in interpersonal relations, broke down and “demystified” polygyny. The Strength of Our Mothers: African American Women and Families (1996) focuses on African Americans family structure based on origins from Africa (University of Illinois Press 2019).

Her contributions to Feminist Anthropology focused on the status of women, and how woman’s cultural function was not subordinate to men, but “complimentary”. In an article she wrote called “Sex Roles, Education, and Development in Africa”, Sudarkasa discusses many important and relevant themes that she chose to highlight with her research. She states that couples often worked in the same occupation, such as farmers or traders, with the labor divided based on sex — there was no superior or inferior type of task, only appropriate and inappropriate. She continues to discuss indigenous Africa’s traditions of education, pointing out widely-held beliefs that it was little to nonexistent, which is untrue. She also comments on the struggle that colonialism introduced to African cultures, taking away jobs and leaving them “underdeveloped” (Sudarkasa 1982).

Niara Sudarkasa was born to the name Gloria Albertha Marshall in 1938. She was an American Anthropologist from Florida, and a gifted student from a young age. She was accepted into her first college, Fisk University, under a scholarship at the age of 15. Her mother had high expectations for her to go to college, and she did just that. In 1967, she was one of eight black women to have a Ph.D. in Anthropology (Black Feminist Anthropology 31). She became Columbia University’s first African American female teacher. She later taught at the University of Michigan, where she first began to refer to herself by a name of her own choice “Niara Sudarkasa”. “Sudarkasa” was chosen to be her African surname and “Niara” means “high purpose” (Babers 2019).

Throughout the course of her lifetime, Sudarkasa was the recipient of many awards and honors. She was the first African American woman to be named a chief in the historical Ife Kingdom of the Yoruba of Nigeria. Throughout her career, she was awarded thirteen honorary degrees (Babers 2019).

Niara Sudarkasa died May 2019, in her birthplace of St. Lauderdale, Florida. Niara Sudarkasa dedicated her life to studying and teaching anthropology. Her work highlighted misconceptions that had been great oversights on sex roles on certain cultures in indigenous Africa. Her work as an anthropologist is insightful, useful, and inspirational for anthropologists today.

Bibliography

Babers, M. (2019, December 11) Niara Sudarkasa (1938–2019). Retrieved from https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/people-african-american-history/niara-sudarkasa-1938-2019/

“Niara Sudarkasa Biography.” The HistoryMakers, 13 Jan. 2005, web.archive.org/web/20070929102655/www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=958.

Sudarkasa, N. (1982). Sex Roles, Education, and Development in Africa. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 13(3), 279–289. Retrieved March 20, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3216639

Williams, Erica Lorraine. “Remembering Niara Sudarkasa.” Illinois Press Blog, Illinoise Press, 19 June 2019, www.press.uillinois.edu/wordpress/remembering-niara-sudarkasa/.

Photo courtesy of Diverse Issues in Higher Education.