William Russell Bascom

1912-1981

    William R. Bascom was born in 1912 in Princeton, Illinois. He received his B.A. degree in Physics in 1933 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He decided to take a different career path and earned his M.A. in Anthropology in 1936. In 1939, he was the first student to receive a Ph.D. in Anthropology under Melville Herskovit at Northwestern University.

    In 1938, Bascom's field research in Nigeria, was published as The Sociological Role of the Yoruba Cult-Group. When he returned from that trip, he brought with him the first two Ife heads to come out of Africa, both of which Bascom later returned to Ife. He worked with the Gullah people of Georgia and South Carolina for a while after he joined the Anthropology Department at Northwestern University. With the outbreak of World War II, he joined the O.S.S. He also served as Chief of the French West African Section for the Board of Economic Warfare. In 1943, he and Ralph Bunche put together the publication, A Pocket Guide to West  Africa,  for the Navy and War Departments. Bascom spent some time working for the Foreign Economic Administration in Accra, Ghana for a time before returning to Northwestern University.   

    Bascom spent the fall of 1945 teaching at Northwestern University, then went to the Caroline Islands  in the spring of 1946 as Chief Economist of the United States Commercial Company in Ponape. He was back at Northwestern University by the fall of 1947. In 1948 he was off to Cuba after receiving the Wenner-Gren Foundation to study the descendents of the Yoruba. Berta Montera, a Cuban born folklorist, was an anthropology student who accompanied Bascom for the study. Bascom and Montera were married after the field trip ended.

    Bascom was an American anthropologist who's main concern was African ethnography, folklore and art. He worked as Director of the Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology. William Bascom wrote a few books on Yoruba culture and more on African art and folklore.  Bascom had an extensive collection of African art which went to the Lowie Museum when he died. His death occurred on September 11, 1981, one month after open heart surgery, due to complications.  His most notable titles include:

     The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of Southwestern Nigeria (1951)

     Two Forms of Afro-Cuban Divination (1952)

     Ponape: A Pacific Economy in Transition (1965)

     Ifa Divination: Communication Between Gods and Men in West Africa (1969)

     Sixteen Cowries: Yoruba Divination from Africa to the New World (1980)

 

References

Picture reprinted with permission of the American Anthropological Association: American Anthropologist 88:1, March, 1986

American Anthropologist, Vol. 88, No 1. Page 154, The American Anthropologist Association, 1986

Contemporary Authors: Obituary Notice

http://lib.berkeley.edu/ANTH/emeritus/bascom.bio/obit_iaf.html

 

Written By: Nikki Akins, 2002

Edited By: Lillian Dolentz, 2008