Editorial Board

Dr. Martin Kilson

PhD

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Dr. Martin Kilson, PhD - Hails from an African Methodist background and clergy: From a great-great grandfather who founded an African Methodist Episcopal church in Maryland in the 1840s; from a great-grandfather AME clergyman; from a Civil War veteran great-grandfather who founded an African Union Methodist Protestant church in Pennsylvania in 1885; and from an African Methodist clergyman father who pastored in an Eastern Pennsylvania milltown--Ambler, PA. He attended Lincoln University (PA), 1949-1953, and Harvard graduate school. Appointed in 1962 as the first African American to teach in Harvard College and in 1969 he was the first African American tenured at Harvard. He retired in 2003 as Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government, Emeritus. His publications include: Political Change in a West African State (Harvard University Press, 1966); Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970); New States in the Modern World (Harvard University Press, 1975); The African Diaspora: Interpretive Essays (Harvard University Press, 1976); The Making of Black Intellectuals: Studies on the African American Intelligentsia (Forthcoming. University of MIssouri Press); and The Transformation of the African American Intelligentsia, 1900-2008 (Forthcoming). Click here to contact Dr. Kilson.

20 pieces

Commentary

The State of Black American Politics

By Dr. Martin Kilson Editorial Board

Dr. Martin Kilson’s grand overview of the course of Black American electoral politics during the past three decades is required reading for all persons concerned with U.S. history and politics. Kilson’s exposition and interpretation of the “core agenda” that has mobilized African American activists, politicians and voters, from passage of the Voting Rights Act of…

Dr. Martin Kilson's grand overview of the course of Black American electoral politics during the past three decades is required reading for all persons concerned with…

Continue reading 34 min

Guest Commentary

The N-word as Therapy for Racists

By Dr. Martin Kilson Editorial Board

Dr. Martin Kilson, a Harvard research professor of political science, was the first African American to be granted full tenure at the college, in 1968. He retired from Harvard’s Department of Government three years ago, and is now completing 22 years of work on the two-volume study, “The Making of Black Intellectuals,” to be published…

Dr. Martin Kilson, a Harvard research professor of political science, was the first African American to be granted full tenure at the college, in 1968. He…

Continue reading 10 min