Robert Fikes
Retired reference librarian and subject bibliographer for Africana Studies, European, American, Middle Eastern, and African history at San Diego State University
Graduate of Tuskegee University
Graduate degrees in modern European history and library science at the University of Minnesota
Robert Fikes, Jr., a 1970 graduate of Tuskegee University, earned graduate degrees in modern European history and library science at the University of Minnesota. Retired since 2017, he worked as a reference librarian at San Diego State University where he was also a subject bibliographer for Africana Studies, European, American, Middle Eastern, and African history. Fikes has published numerous journal articles, essays, encyclopedia entries, newspaper and magazine contributions, bibliographies, and several print and online books pertaining to history, art, and literature.
Articles by
George Washington Woodbey (1854-?)
Born into slavery on a plantation in Tennessee, George Washington Woodbey was largely self-educated and as young man supported himself...
Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937)
The first African American artist to gain international renown, Henry Ossawa Tanner was the son of a prominent cleric born...
Alfred O. Coffin (1861-?)
Although he was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in a field of the biological sciences, Alfred Oscar...
Arna Bontemps (1902-1973)
Hoping for a much better life outside the racially oppressive South and Alexandria, Louisiana where Arnaud Wendell Bontemps was born...
Bertram O. Fraser-Reid (1934-2020)
In the early 1990s Bertram Oliver Fraser-Reid was being touted as the first person of African descent to have a...
Elijah Walter Miles (1934-2020)
Even before finishing graduate school Elijah Walter Miles had a record of civil disobedience in support of civil rights objectives. ...
Frederick M. Roberts (1879-1952)
Frederick Madison Roberts was born in Chillicothe, Ohio. He arrived in Los Angeles at age six and was the first...
Roland Hayes (1887-1976)
The son of former slaves, Roland W. Hayes, born June 3, 1887 in Curryville, Georgia, became the first African American...
Tuskegee Airmen
Over the past seven decades the exploits of the Tuskegee Airmen have been celebrated, occasionally mythologized, and used as a recent...
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (1932-1972)
Acting on the presumption that rural southern blacks were generally more promiscuous and syphilitic than whites, and without sufficient funding...
William Grant Still (1895-1978)
Considered by many as the dean of African American composers, William Grant Still, the son of educators, was born in...
Chancellor J. Williams (1898-1992)
Prominent in the pantheon of Afrocentric scholars is Chancellor James Williams, the son of a former slave, born on December...
