Elliot P. Skinner

Elliott Percival Skinner was born on 20 June 1924 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, into a family of five children, with Barbadian ancestry on his father's side. He came to the United States in 1943 and served in the U.S. Army in France during the Second World War, earning his citizenship through that service.

Skinner built his scholarship at Columbia University, taking his master's degree in 1952 and his doctorate in 1955. Turning from the Caribbean to West Africa, he lived among the Mossi of Upper Volta and learned their language, Moore. His fieldwork produced landmark studies, among them The Mossi of the Upper Volta (1964) and African Urban Life: The Transformation of Ouagadougou (1974), establishing him as a foremost authority on Mossi society.

In 1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him United States Ambassador to the Republic of Upper Volta, a post he held until 1969; the Voltaic government named him Commandeur de l'Ordre National Voltaique in 1968. Returning to Columbia, he became Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and, from 1972 to 1975, the first African American to chair its anthropology department, retiring as professor emeritus in 1994.

Scholar of Africa, diplomat between two worlds, and pathbreaker in the American academy, Elliott P. Skinner carried his people's story across an ocean and gave it enduring voice. May his learning and his dignity be long honored.