Research Catalog

Title

August Meier papers, 1930-1998.

Author

Meier, August, 1923-2003.

Supplementary Content

Finding Aid

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

74 lin.ft.

Summary

The August Meier papers document this historian's personal development as a liberal and progressive thinker stemming from his formative years, and emphasizing his professional activities in the roles of researcher, historian, lecturer and editor of several series in black studies. The collection is divided into ten series and forty subseries.

Subjects

• Rudwick, Elliott M
• African American college teachers
• Atheneum (New York, N.Y.)
• African Americans > History > 1964-
• Meier, August, 1923-
• African Americans > Suffrage
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)
• African Americans > Maryland
• African Americans > History > 1877-1964
• Congress of Racial Equality
• Rustin, Bayard, 1910-1987
• African Americans > Mississippi
• African Americans > Study and teaching
• African Americans > Civil rights > Southern States
• University of Illinois (System) > Press
• King, Preston T., 1936-
• Historians > United States
• University Publications of America (Firm)
• Pioneer Youth Camp (Kingston, N.Y.)
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People > Newark Branch
• African Americans > Education
• African American historians

Note

• Printed material transferred to General Research and Reference Division.
• Manuscript transferred to Literary and Scholarly Manuscripts Collection in the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division.

Access (note)

• Student files closed until 50 years after most recent date in each individual file. One file relating to Tyrone Tillery is closed until 2041.

Source (note)

• Meier, August

Biography (note)

• August Meier has been a major force in the study and promotion of African-American history for over thirty years. During his career he taught at three historically black colleges followed by twenty years at Kent State University, and was a liberal activist in the civil rights struggles dating to the 1940s. As editor of four important series on blacks in America, he influenced students and scholars alike.

Indexes/Finding Aids (note)

• Finding aid available in repository.

Call Number

Sc MG 340

OCLC

NYPW00-A4

Author

Meier, August, 1923-2003.

Title

August Meier papers, 1930-1998.

Access

Student files closed until 50 years after most recent date in each individual file. One file relating to Tyrone Tillery is closed until 2041.

Biography

August Meier has been a major force in the study and promotion of African-American history for over thirty years. During his career he taught at three historically black colleges followed by twenty years at Kent State University, and was a liberal activist in the civil rights struggles dating to the 1940s. As editor of four important series on blacks in America, he influenced students and scholars alike.

Meier received both his Master's degree (1949) and his Ph.D. from Columbia University (1957). His dissertation, "Negro Racial Thought in the Age of Booker T. Washington, ca. 1880-1915," was subsequently revised and published under the title, "Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915," (1963) and placed him on the cutting edge of intellectual historians who used sociological and anthropological approaches in their examination of black history.

Meier taught at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, 1945-1949; Fisk University in Nashville, 1953-1957, where he also served as research assistant to President Charles S. Johnson, the sociologist; and Morgan State College in Baltimore, 1957-1964. As adult advisor to a student civil rights organization that participated in demonstrations against segregated facilities, Meier developed an interest in the origins of non-violent direct action, and researched and wrote about early twentieth century manifestations of this form of protest. From 1964 to 1967, he taught history at Chicago's Roosevelt University, and from 1967 until his retirement in 1993 Meier was a professor of history at Kent State University in Ohio. His long collaboration with his colleague and companion, Elliott Rudwick, professor of sociology at Kent State, resulted in seven books and numerous articles. Their joint effort lasted until Rudwick's death in 1985.

Meier has been a prolific writer analyzing black protest thought, civil rights and related issues. He has either authored or edited fourteen books between 1963 and 1986, published close to one hundred articles, and written book reviews which have appeared in major history journals. His most far-reaching impact on the intellectual community, however, has been achieved through his role as editor of books and other publications for four series in black studies. He served as general editor of the "Negro in American Life Series" for Atheneum, 1966-1974, and was general editor of the University of Illinois Press "Blacks in the New World Series", from 1972 to 1998. Meier, along with Elliott Rudwick co-edited the Bobbs-Merrill "Reprint Series in Black Studies, 1966-1974, in addition to serving as a co-editor (also with Rudwick and later with John Bracey) for University Publications of America's, "Black Studies Research Sources: Microfilms of Materials in Major Archival Manuscript Collections, 1983-1998."

Indexes

Finding aid available in repository.

Local Note

Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, 515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, N.Y. 10037.

Source

SCM88-43

1.1\a Meier, August Gift 1988

Connect to:

Finding Aid

Research Call Number

Sc MG 340