Frank M. Snowden, Jr.

Frank M. Snowden, Jr. ( born July 17, 1911, York County, Virginia; † February 18 2007 in Washington DC) was an American professor of ancient history at Howard University. He was considered the largest national property authority, which was concerned the lives of blacks in antiquity. His son, Frank M. Snowden III, is a professor of Italian history in the 20th century at Yale University.

Life and work

His father was first Colonel in the U.S. Army and later for many years a merchant in Boston. Snowden Jr. made ​​his higher education at the Boston Latin School and then went to Harvard University. There, he earned both the bachelor 1932, the master's degrees in 1933 and 1944, Dr. phil. in History.

He taught in the years to Ancient History at Georgetown University, Vassar College and Mary Washington College. In 1942 he moved to a permanent professorship at Howard University. He was from 1956 to 1968 Head of Department of the College of Liberal Arts ( Humanities ). He turned against the then-emerging fashionable Afrocentrism. Once in the environment of the Vietnam War and the 1968 riots he had to take so much criticism, he resigned from this academic management posts.

Snowden was well known for his research on blacks in antiquity. He concluded from his study of sources that in ancient Rome and Greece racial prejudice was not an issue. The reason for this was, according to Snowden that most blacks who you met at that time were not slaves. Most slaves in the ancient Roman Empire were white. Most blacks who you met, were warriors, statesmen and mercenaries. Therefore, it was not the racism of the modern civilization at that time. He studied the sources of the ancient arts and literature and found conclusive evidence that blacks taken with the Greeks and Romans coexisted at the time. Snowden Jr. took over responsibilities as a member of the U.S. delegation to UNESCO in Paris, was at times cultural attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Rome. He was also a lecturer of the U.S. State Department. He was fluent in Latin, Ancient Greek, German, French and Italian.

From his many publications as a historian stood out the monograph Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco - Roman Experience (1970). For this he received the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit of the American Philological Association. Also reputation he earned with the reference 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 professional colleagues, including George M. Fredrickson's Racism: A Short History ( German: Racism, Hamburg 2004) and Martin Bernal's Black Athena ( German: Black Athena ). In 2003 Snowden Jr. in the White House, the National Humanities Medal awarded by the President of the United States for his life's work.

Snowden Jr. was married to a high school teacher from 1935 until her death in 2005. He died 95 years old in the Grand Oaks senior residence in Washington DC of a heart attack. Most large, regional U.S. newspapers ran obituaries for him. He left behind 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