Elliott P. Skinner audio collection

circa 1950s-1976

Elliott Percival Skinner (June 20, 1924 - April 1, 2007) was a Trinidadian-born anthropologist and US ambassador to the Republic of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) from 1966 to 1969. Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, Skinner came to the US in 1943. He enlisted in the US Army the following year and fought in World War II in France, which allowed him to obtain American citizenship. Skinner earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology from New York University (1951), and master's and doctorate degrees in the same field from Columbia University (1952, 1955).

From 1955 to 1957 Skinner lived in Upper Volta studying labor migration among the Mossi people, the largest ethnic group in Upper Volta. There he learned Mooré (also called More or Mossi), the language of the Mossi people. In 1959, he began as assistant professor of anthropology at New York University where he researched and taught African ethnology. In 1963, he became the first African American tenured by the university. From 1966 until his retirement in 1994, Skinner was a professor at Columbia University, and was named chairman of the anthropology department in 1972. He was the first African American department chair at the university. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Skinner ambassador to Upper Volta, where he served until 1969.

Skinner authored twelve books including The Mossi of Upper Volta (1964), which was revised and republished in 1989 as The Mossi of Burkina Faso: Chiefs, Politicians and Soldiers; African Urban Life: The Transformation of Ouagadougou (1974); and African-Americans and United States Policy Toward Africa 1850-1924 (1992).

Skinner died of heart failure at the age of eighty-two in his home in Washington, DC.