Background

Benjamin Arthur Quarles was born on January 23, 1904 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. His father, Arthur Benedict Quarles, was a subway porter and his mother, Margaret O'Brien Quarles, was a homemaker.

Education

Quarles enrolled at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, the oldest historically black college in the South, where he earned a B.A. in 1931. From Shaw, Quarles went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, where he earned an M.A. in 1933 and a Ph.D. in American History in 1940.

Besides, Quarles received 16 honorary degrees from universities in the Unites States.

Career

While finishing his Ph.D at Wisconsin, he taught at Shaw University from 1935 to 1939, and at Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana. After rising to full professor and dean at Dillard University, Quarles relocated in 1953 to Morgan State College (now University) in Baltimore, Maryland and remained there for the rest of his academic career. At Morgan State College Quarles reached near legendary status as the long-time head of the History Department from 1953 till 1974, a revered teacher and counselor, an intellectual and professional mentor for two generations of African American scholars, and an internationally acclaimed historian of the black experience in the United States.

A prolific writer, Quarles published ten books, twenty-three major articles, and hundreds of shorter pieces of various sorts. Benjamin Quarles died in Baltimore in 1996 of a heart attack. He was 92.

Achievements

• Quarles' book "Black Mosaic: Essays in Afro-American History and Historiography" received Senior Historian Scholarly Distinction Award from American Historical Association in 1988.
  
  In 1988 Morgan State University dedicated The Benjamin A. Quarles African-American Studies Room in the school library as a repository for his books, manuscripts, and memorabilia. In 1996 he was the recipient of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History Lifetime Achievement Award.
  
  Moreover, Quarles was inducted into the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, Inc. in Baltimore in 2013.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Lincoln And The Negro (Da Capo Paperback)
  • The Negro in the Making of America: Third Edition Revised, Updated, and Expanded
  • Black Abolitionists (Da Capo Paperback)
  • The Negro in the Civil War
  • The Negro in the American Revolution (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press)
  • Black Mosaic: Essays in Afro-American History and Historiography
  • Frederick Douglass
  • Lift Every Voice: The Lives of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary Church Terrell and James Weldon Johnson
  • Allies for Freedom and Blacks on John Brown

Membership

Quarles was a Guggenheim fellow from 1958 to 1959, and was an honorary consultant in United States history for the Library of Congress from 1970 until 1971.

Personality

Quarles was refined, dignified, and professional. The word “gentleman” was invariably used in describing his demeanor. Many African American scholars who entered the history profession during and after the nineteen sixties looked to Quarles as one of the principal transitional figures whose influential scholarship and unfailing support had opened wider opportunities for them.

Quotes from others about the person

• John Hope Franklin: "I can say categorically and without fear of contradiction that Benjamin Quarles was one of the finest, most original historians of his generation.”

Connections

Quarles married Vera Bullock who died in 1951. The following year he married Ruth Brett. The couple had two daughters, Pamela and Roberta.

Father:

Arthur Benedict Quarles

Mother:

Margaret O'Brien Quarles

First wife:

Vera Bullock

Second wife:

Ruth Brett

Daughter:

Pamela Quarles

Daughter:

Roberta Quarles