Sidney Kaplan collection

1971

Sidney Kaplan was a scholar of African American culture and history. In World War II, he served as a first lieutenant in the United States Army in England. His experiences working with an all-Black unit in the segregated Army, coupled with his interest in Marxism, would influence his later career. In 1963, Kaplan and an art gallery organized a seminal exhibit on portrayals of Blacks in American painting.

Kaplan taught at the University of Massachusetts (mostly at Amherst) for 31 years and helped found its African American Studies Department. He also helped create the University of Massachusetts Press; was a founder and the editor of The Massachusetts Review, a journal on the arts and public affairs; and edited the Gehenna Press, a journal on the fine arts. His books included The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution (New York Graphic Society, 1973), written with his wife, Emma, and American Studies in Black and White (University of Massachusetts, 1991). He also worked as a consultant for the Public Broadcasting System series The Civil War and Africans in America. He died in 1993.