IRENE DIGGS

Diggs (1906- ) was born in Monmouth, Illinois, into a supportive family. She devoted her life to studying race relations and the cultural differences among blacks in the U.S. and Latin America. Diggs was the first student ever to receive a masters degree from Clark-Atlanta University in 1933, and she earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Havana in 1944. While at Clark-Atlanta, she had been W.E.B. Du Bois’s research assistant for 11 years. After doing research in South America soon after the war, she returned to the U.S. in 1947 and joined the faculty at Morgan State College in the departments of sociology and anthropology until retiring in 1976.