Rayford Logan

Rayford Whittingham Logan (January 7, 1897 – November 4, 1982) was an African-American historian and Pan-African activist. He was best known for his study of post-Reconstruction America, a period he termed "the nadir of American race relations". In the late 1940s he was the chief advisor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on international affairs.

Logan was a long-standing professor at Howard University. In 1932, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Logan to his Black Cabinet. Logan drafted Roosevelt's executive order prohibiting the exclusion of blacks from the military in World War II.

In 1950–51, Logan became Director of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).

Logan was the 15th General President of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans.

In 1980, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.

Books by Logan

• The Betrayal of the Negro (1954 and 1965)
• Dictionary of American Negro Biography
• The Negro in the United States
• The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901

Books on Logan

• Janken, Kenneth Robert (April 1997). Rayford W. Logan and the Dilemma of the African-American Intellectual. University of Massachusetts Press. p. 336. ISBN 1-55849-069-8. 

References

• Mason, Herman (1999). "Rayford Whittingham Logan". The Talented Tenth: The Founders and Presidents of Alpha (2nd ed.). Winter Park, FL: Four-G. ISBN 1-885066-63-5. 

External links

• University of Washington
• [1] University of Massachusetts Press

Preceded by Charles H. Wesley

General President of Alpha Phi Alpha 1941–1945

Succeeded by Belford Lawson, Jr.