Careers in the Classics

America’s few Black classics professors have overcome contempt and criticism to contribute a unique perspective to the study of the ancient world

By Lydia Lum

Dr. Patrice Rankine is accustomed to proving himself to his students. The

associate professor from Purdue University has grown used to the irony. As one of the few Black classicists teaching at an American university, he has drawn plenty of skepticism from those taking his Latin and Greek courses.

“Students wonder if I really know the languages,” says Rankine. “After a while, they realize that I do.”   

He and his peers say that minorities’ cultural aversions to the field, coupled with societal doubts about whether people of color can fully appreciate tales from Greek and Roman antiquity, make their jobs tougher. Like their colleagues elsewhere in the humanities, classicists traditionally don’t command large salaries, and high-profile minorities in the field have been few and far between.

Minorities represented only 2.7 percent of the doctorate-holding classicists teaching in the United States and Canada in 2002-2003, according to the American Philological Association. Neither the APA nor the Archaeological Institute of America has a minority caucus. Yet individual accomplishments over the years rival those in any field. Dr. Gregson Davis, the professor and dean of humanities at Duke University, was a valedictorian at Harvard in 1960 at age 19. An Antigua native, his career of more than 35 years has included positions at Stanford and Cornell universities. Dr. Frank Snowden, professor emeritus at Howard University, gained acclaim for his books in recent decades about Blacks in ancient Egypt, Greece and Italy. One of Black Issues’ 2001 “Emerging Scholars,” classics professor Dr. Danielle Allen, now dean of humanities at the University of Chicago, won a MacArthur “genius” grant that same year. All of these academic superstars credit charismatic teachers for sparking their interests. Their backgrounds are varied. A few of the future classicists came from well-to-do families. Others hailed from blue-collar America and earned scholarships to the country’s most prestigious institutions. In many instances, these scholars were the children of educators and museum-goers who nurtured their childhood passions for reading.