Frank M. Snowden, Jr.

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Frank M. Snowden, Jr. (born July 17, 1911 in York County , Virginia , † February 18, 2007 in Washington, DC ) was an American professor of ancient history at Howard University . He was considered the greatest national authority on the life of blacks in antiquity . His son, Frank Martin Snowden , is Professor of 20th Century Italian History at Yale University .

Life and work

His father was initially a colonel in the US Army and later a long-time businessman in Boston . Snowden Jr. graduated from Boston Latin School and then went to Harvard University . There he obtained his bachelor's degree in 1932 , his master's degree in 1933 and a Dr. phil. in history .

He taught Ancient History at Georgetown University , Vassar College and Mary Washington College in the following years . In 1942 he moved to a permanent professorship at Howard University . From 1956 to 1968 he was department head of the College of Liberal Arts (humanities). He turned against the then emerging fashionable afrocentrism. After he had to take a lot of criticism in the context of the Vietnam War and the 1968 unrest, he resigned from this academic leadership position.

Snowden was well known for his research on blacks in ancient times. He concluded from his source studies that racial prejudice was not an issue in ancient Rome and Greece. The reason for this, according to Snowden, was that most of the blacks you met at the time were not slaves. Most of the slaves in the ancient Roman Empire were white. Most of the blacks one met were warriors, statesmen, and mercenaries. Hence the racism of modern civilization did not exist back then. He studied the sources of ancient arts and literature and found conclusive evidence that blacks coexisted with the Greeks and Romans, respected at the time. Snowden Jr. took on responsibility as a member of the US delegation to UNESCO in Paris and was temporarily cultural attaché at the US embassy in Rome . He was also a senior lecturer at the US State Department . He was fluent in Latin, Ancient Greek, German, French and Italian.

Out of his numerous publications as a historian, the monograph Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (1970) stood out. For this he received the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit from the American Philological Association . He also gained renown with the specialist books The Image of the Black in Western Art I: From the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire (1976) and Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (1983). His results influenced the publications of other specialist colleagues, namely George M. Fredrickson's Racism: A Short History (German: Rassismus , Hamburg 2004) and Martin Bernal's Black Athena (German: Black Athene ). In 2003, Snowden Jr. was awarded the National Humanities Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the President of the United States at the White House .

Snowden Jr. was married to a high school teacher from 1935 until her death in 2005. He himself died of a heart attack at the age of 95 in the Grand Oaks retirement home in Washington DC . Most of the major US national newspapers had obituaries for him. He left a daughter and a son, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Works (selection)

  • Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks . Harvard University Press, 1984
  • Blacks in antiquity: ethiopians in the Greco-Roman experience . Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1972, ISBN 0-674-07626-5
  • The Conquest of Malaria in Italy 1900-1962 . Yale University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-300-10899-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Washington Post, February 22, 2007: Obituary (obituary) for Snowden Jr.
  2. ↑ Martin Bernal, Black Athena. The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization , Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey 1987, as paperback 1999, ISBN 0-8135-1277-8 , Volume I, pp. 434-435
  3. ↑ National Endowment for the Humanities : The US President presented the Humanities Medals in 2003 ( Memento from November 19, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Snowden, Frank M., Jr.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Snowden, Frank Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH July 17, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH York County , Virginia
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 2007
Place of death Washington, DC