Research Catalog

Melville J. and Frances S. Herskovits papers

Title: Melville J. and Frances S. Herskovits papers, 1902-1972.
Author: Herskovits, Melville J. (Melville Jean), 1895-1963.
Supplementary Content: Finding Aid

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Status	Container	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Not available - Please for assistance.	Box 70 (Closed until 2024)	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 70 (Closed until 2024)	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Not available - Please for assistance.	Box 31 (Closed until 2024)	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 31 (Closed until 2024)	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Not available - Please for assistance.	Box 30 (Closed until 2024)	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 30 (Closed until 2024)	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Not available - Please for assistance.	Box 28 (Closed until 2024)	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 28 (Closed until 2024)	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 105	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 105	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 104	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 104	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 103	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 103	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 102	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 102	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 101	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 101	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 100	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 100	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 99	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 99	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 98	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 98	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 97	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 97	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 96	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 96	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 95	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 95	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 94	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 94	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 93	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 93	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 92A	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 92A	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 92	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 92	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Box 91	Mixed material	Use in library	Sc MG 261 Box 91	Schomburg Center - Manuscripts & Archives

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Details

Additional Authors

Description

43.6 lin. ft. (106 boxes)

Summary

The Melville J. and Frances S. Herskovits papers document the personal lives and professional careers of Melville J. Herskovits, his wife Frances S. Herskovits. There are also papers for their daughter Jean F. Herskovits.

Donor/Sponsor

Schomburg NEH Automated Access to Special Collections Project.

Subject

Note

Art and artifacts have been transferred to the Art and Artifacts Division, Photographs have been transferred to the Photographs and Prints Division and Recordings have been transferred to the Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division and are described separately.

Access (note)

Boxes 28, 30, 31 (folder 189) and 70 (folder 703) are closed until 2024.

Source (note)

Herskovits, Jean

Location of Other Archival Materials (note)

Northwestern University Archives

Biography (note)

Anthropologist; Africanist; founder of the first African Studies program in the United States.

Provenance (note)

Portions of the collection were on loan to the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC and in private storage in Orlando, Florida. The entire collection was acquired by the Schomburg Center in 1986.

Processing Action (note)

Processed
Cataloged

Call Number

Sc MG 261

OCLC

NYPW090000019-A

Author

Herskovits, Melville J. (Melville Jean), 1895-1963.

Title

Melville J. and Frances S. Herskovits papers, 1902-1972.

Access

Boxes 28, 30, 31 (folder 189) and 70 (folder 703) are closed until 2024.

Biography

Anthropologist; Africanist; founder of the first African Studies program in the United States. Melville J. Herskovits was born in 1895 in Bellefontaine, Ohio. He received his Doctorate in Anthropology in 1923 from Columbia University where he studied with the eminent anthropologist Franz Boas.

With his research associate, collaborator and wife Frances, Herskovits embarked on a forty-year study of African cultures on both sides of the Atlantic. In his 1941 landmark work "The Myth of the Negro Past" and in his more than 400 publications, Herskovits refuted many of the popularly-held beliefs regarding the absence of a sound African culture and the question of the continuity of African culture among blacks in the New World.

For thirty-five years Herskovits taught at Northwestern University where in 1947 he founded the Program of African Studies, the first of its kind in the United States. He received numerous honors and distinctions throughout his career and served as both President of the American Folklore Society and the African Studies Association. He also chaired committees of the American Coucil of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council among others. Herskovits died in 1963 and in 1970 the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies was established at Northwestern University.

Frances Herskovits was her husband's close and constant collaborator. During field trips she obtained data pertaining to the subculture of the women as well as information on some aspects of ritual, art and other major activities. Mrs. Herskovits co-authored several articles and four books with Melville Herskovits, including "Rebel Destiny" (1934), "Suriname Folk-lore" (1936), "Trinidad Village" (1947) and "Dahomean Narrative" (1958). In 1966 she edited "The New World Negro," a collection of papers by Herskovits and in 1973 "Cultural Relativism," another collection of his writings. With a background in literature and French, Mrs. Herskovits taught African literature at Northwestern University for many years. She died in 1972 in Evanston, Illinois.

Provenance

Portions of the collection were on loan to the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC and in private storage in Orlando, Florida. The entire collection was acquired by the Schomburg Center in 1986.

Location of Other Archival Materials

Northwestern University Archives, University Library, 1935 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60201 United States Program of African Records (35/13).

Northwestern University Archives, University Library, 1935 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60201 United States Melville J. Herskovits Papers (35/6).

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Finding Aid

Added Author

Armstrong, Robert Plant.

Campbell, Donald Thomas, 1916-

Drake, St. Clair.

Fernandez, James W.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude.

Messenger, Jon C. (John Cowan), 1920-

Robeson, Paul, 1898-1976.

Szwed, John F., 1936-

White, Walter, 1893-1955.

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Beacon Press.

University of Chicago. Press.

Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.)

American Society For African Culture (2nd : 1959 Jun. 26-29 : New York, N.Y.)

Congresso Internacional de Americanists (31st : 1954 : Sao Paulo, Brazil)

Inter-African Conference On Social Sciences (1955 Aug.-Sept : Bakavu, Belgian Congo)

International Conference of Africanists (1st : 1962 : Accra, Ghana)

International Social Science Council (1961 Sept. 12-15 : Paris, France)

Social Science Research Council (1962 Apr. 13-14 : New York, N.Y.)

Research Call Number

Sc MG 261

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