Background
Dodson grew up in Chester, Pennsylvania, where his family had moved from Virginia.
(African Americans, more than any other populations in the...)
African Americans, more than any other populations in the Americas, have been shaped by migrations. Their culture and history are the products of black peoples' various movements, coerced and voluntary, that started, in the Western Hemisphere, five hundred years ago. Theirs is the story of men and women forced out of Africa; of enslaved people moved from the coastal southeast to the Deep South; of fugitives walking to freedom across the country and beyond; of colonists leaving their land to settle on foreign shores; of southerners migrating west and north; and of immigrants arriving from the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade has created an enduring image of black people as transported commodities, and is usually considered the single element in the construction of the African Diaspora, it is centuries of additional migrations that have given shape to the nation we know today, a nation different from that forged solely by the dreadful transportation of the Africans against their will. And it is this vast array of migrations that truly defines the African American experience. Always on the move, resourceful, and creative, men and women of African origin have been risk-takers in an exploitative and hostile environment. Their survival skills, efficient networks, and dynamic culture have enabled them to thrive and spread, and to be at the very core of the settling and development of the Americas. Their migrations have changed not only their world, and the fabric of the African Diaspora but also their nation and the Western Hemisphere. Between 1492 and 1776, an estimated 6.5 million people migrated to the Americas. More than 5 out of 6 were Africans. The major colonial labor force, they laid the economic and cultural foundations of the continents. Their migrations continued during and after slavery. In the United States alone, 6.5 million African Americans left the South for northern and western cities between 1916 and 1970. With this internal Great Migration, the most massive in the history of the country, African Americans stopped being a southern, rural community to become a national, urban population. The men and women of the Great Migration not only transformed the cities they settled in, but their neighborhoods became primary destinations for black people arriving from the Caribbean, Africa, and South America. These immigrants often retained their national and ethnic identities, and brought new resources into the African American community. With each wave of migration, changes in the demographic, cultural, religious, economic, and political life of the recipient communities occurred; and the nation's development has been inextricably linked with these movements. At the same time, from the earliest days, thousands of African Americans have left their country when it became apparent that they would not find at home the freedom and equality they aspired to. Their quest for liberty and better opportunities took them to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Africa. African American out-migration has now become insignificant, but black popular culture, created out of the diverse influences brought about by centuries of movement, resonates throughout the world in an unprecedented cultural migration. Today's 35 million African Americans are heirs to all the migrations that have formed, modeled, and transformed their community, the country, and the African Diaspora. They are the offspring of diverse African ethnicities who also include, in their genetic makeup, Europeans, Native Americans, and Asians. They represent the most diverse population in the nation. A population that has embraced its varied heritage built by millions of men and women constantly on the move, looking for better opportunities, starting over, paving the way, and making sacrifices for future generations.
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Dodson grew up in Chester, Pennsylvania, where his family had moved from Virginia.
Bachelor of Science, West Chester State College, 1961. Postgraduate, University of California at Los Angeles, 1964. Master of Arts, Villanova University, 1964.
ABF, University California, Berkeley, 1977. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Widner University, 1987. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Adelphi University, 2004.
In 1964, he joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Ecuador. In 1968, believing he had responsibilities in the United States during the civil rights movement, he returned, stopping in Puerto Rico for a period of reflection and then going to Berkeley to study slavery in the Western Hemisphere. From 1974 to 1979 he worked as the executive director of the Atlanta-based Institute of the Black World, in addition to teaching classes at Emory University.
Dodson was later a consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) until Dodson took on the directorship of the Schomburg Center in 1984 and had a successful tenure, during which he increased the center's holdings of historical artifacts—many of them rare and irreplaceable—from 5 to 10 million, curated numerous displays and exhibitions, and raised millions of dollars in support. One high point was his intimate involvement in the African Burial Ground project, through which the remains of hundreds of former slaves buried in Manhattan during the 17th and 18th centuries were exhumed and reburied. After retirement from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in 2010, Dodson took on a position as director of Howard University's library system, which includes the undergraduate and graduate libraries, and the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (MSRC).
(African Americans, more than any other populations in the...)
Member Oakland Black Caucus, 1969-1973. Member Education Brain trust Congressional Black Caucus, Atlanta University School Social Work, National Commission for Citizens in Education, National Credit Union Federal Ecuador. Board overseers Lang College/New School for Social Research.
Board directors NCBS, AHSA, Caribbean Research Center. Member South Carolina History Society, Atlanta Association for International Education, Georgia Association Black Elected Officials, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, African Heritage Studies Association, Association for Study of Afro-American History, Southern History Association, Alpha Phi Alpha.
Married Jualynne est White. Children: Alyce Christine, David Primus Luta.