William Montague Cobb was born on October 12, 1903 in Washington D.C. As the only black physical anthropologist with a Ph.D. before the Korean War, Cobb held the only black perspective on physical anthropology for many years (Harrison and Harrison, 1999, pp. 101). He served as the Chairman of the Anthropology Section of the American Association for Advancement of Science and was the first African American President of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (Mabunda, 1997, pp. 1067). However, Cobb was not only a famous physical anthropologist because of his race, but also because of the great contributions he made to the field of anthropology.
W. Montague Cobb grew up pondering the question of race, which ultimately led him to his studies of anthropology (Harrison and Harrison, 1999, pp. 107). He graduated from Dunbar High School, which was the premier African-American high school of the time. Cobb continued his studies at Amherst College where he studied a wide variety of subjects and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. After his graduation from Amherst, Cobb researched embryology at the prestigious Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory in Massachusetts. Cobb next attended Howard University Medical School, where he earned an Masters Degree in 1929 and would later spend much of his professional career. The next few years Cobb spent his time at Case Western Reserve University, where he earned a Ph.D. and worked on the Hamann-Todd Skeletal Collection (Harrison and Harrison, 1999, pp.111-112).
Cobb returned to Howard University in 1932 and began working on a laboratory of his own to conduct skeletal research. He also continued his research on human cranio-facial union at the Hamann-Todd Collection and the Smithsonian Institute during the summers. In Cobb’s mind, his two best papers on this subject were The Cranio-Facial Union and the Maxillary Tuber in Mammals (1943), and Cranio-Facial Union in Man (1940). These publications established Cobb as a functional anatomist (Harrison and Harrison, 1999, pp.112). Cobb also made significant contributions in the issue of race in athletics, where he claimed race was insignificant to athletics and he also profiled the biology and demography of the African American race during the 1930's (Harrison and Harrison, 1999, pp. 115-120).
With his death on November 20, 1990, Cobb left his legacy of skeletal research with the Laboratory of Anatomy and Physical Anthropology at Howard University. This collection of over 600 skeletons is considered one of the premiere collections of its kind (Harrison and Harrison, 1999, pp. 124-126).
I.E. and Harrison, F. V. (Ed.). (1999). African-American Pioneers in Anthropology. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Cobb, W. Montague. (1997). The African American Almanac. (7th ed.). Detroit: Gale Research, Inc.
Written by: Kyle Melville, 2001