Lawrence D. Reddick

Lawrence D. Reddick (1910-1995) was an African American historian. He worked as a professor at Dillard University. Reddick was also a professor at Alabama State College and Kentucky State College. He also taught at Temple University and was the second curator of the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Born in 1910, Reddick studied at Fisk University, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1939. He became well-respected as a historian and a university professor, and was a frequent contributor to the black educational journals of his day. He had expertise in what would today be called media criticism, especially the effect of radio, movies, and popular culture on public perceptions of Negroes (for example, his study of movies and radio, “Educational Programs for the Improvement of Race Relations.” Journal of Negro Education, Volume 13, #3 (Summer 1944), pp. 367–389).

Reddick was one of the supervisors of a 1930s program to gather remembrances for African-Americans who had been born in slavery. He also wrote a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. that was published in 1958. In addition to being an author, educator and historian, he became a library curator, managing the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature at the New York Public Library. He died on 2 August 1995 in New Orleans at age 85 [1]