Background
Sudarkasa, Niara was born on August 14, 1938 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States. Daughter of Alex Charlton and Rowena (Evans) Marshall.
academic administrator anthropologist
Sudarkasa, Niara was born on August 14, 1938 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States. Daughter of Alex Charlton and Rowena (Evans) Marshall.
Student, Fisk University, 1956. AB, Oberlin College, 1957. Master of Arts, Columbia University, 1959.
Doctor of Philosophy, Columbia University, 1964. Degree (honorary), Fisk University, Oberlin College, 1988. Degree (honorary), Sojourner-Douglass College, 1989.
Degree (honorary), Franklin Marshall College, 1990. Degree (honorary), Susquehanna University, 1990.
In 1989 Essence magazine named her "Educator for the "90s", and in 2001 she became the first African American to be installed as a Chief in the historic Ife Kingdom of the Yoruba of Nigeria. Niara was a gifted student who skipped several grades in primary school. She left Fisk and transferred to Oberlin, earning an associates degree in anthropology and English from Oberlin in 1957.
She received her masters degree in anthropology from Columbia University.
Soon after earning her Doctor of Philosophy, Sudarkasa was appointed assistant professor of anthropology at New York University, the first black woman to hold that position. She was also the first African American to be appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan in 1969.
While at Michigan, she became involved in civil rights and student issues. When she left Michigan in 1986, Sudarkasa became the first female to serve as president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
During Surdarkasa"s presidency at Lincoln University the school increased enrolment, strengthened its undergraduate and international programs and put into place an ambitious minority recruitment effort.
In the late 1990s, after concerns over improper use of university funds, nepotism and other financial irregularities led the state to withhold its $11m budget contribution, Sudarkas resigned from Lincoln University. She was succeeded by interim president James Donaldson, and then by Ivory Nelson. Currently she is the Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and sits on the board of directors for several organizations including the Academy for Educational Development.
Chair special advisory committee on minority enrollment State of Michigan Department Education, 1985-1986. Board directors Ford Foundation Project on New Emmigrants and Established Residents, since 1987, Pennsylvania Economic Development Partnership, since 1987, The Barnes Foundation, since 1989. Member American Anthropol.
Association (executive board 1972-1975), American Ethnological Society, African Studies Association, American Association Higher Education, Council on Foreign Relations.
Married John L. Clark. 1 child, Michael Sudarkasa.