Niara Sudarkasa was born Gloria Albertha Marshall on August 14, 1938, in
Fort Lauderdale,
Florida. Niara was a
gifted student who skipped several grades in
elementary. She graduated from high school and accepted early admission to
Fisk University on a
Ford Foundation scholarship when she was 15 years old. She left Fisk and transferred to
Oberlin College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1957. She received her
master's degree in anthropology from
Columbia University. While completing her Ph.D. she taught at Columbia University, becoming the first
African-American woman to teach there when she earned her
Ph.D. in 1964. She acknowledged the help of anthropologist
Alice Dewey in preparing for field work in the early 1960s. Soon after earning her Ph.D., Sudarkasa was appointed assistant professor of anthropology at
New York University, the first black woman to hold that position. She was also the first tenured African American professor 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, and became the first African American female director of the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies. When she left Michigan in 1986, Sudarkasa became the first female to serve as president of
Lincoln University, the oldest historically black college in the United States. During Surdarkasa's presidency at Lincoln University the school increased enrollment, 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. Niara Sudarkasa was the Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the
African-American Research Library and Cultural Center in
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Sudarkasa died on May 31, 2019, at the age of 80. ==Bibliography==