Previous Profiles
Seth Carpenter, Federal Reserve Board
Larry Chavis, University of North Carolina
Lisa D. Cook, Michigan State University
Sheldon Danziger, University of Michigan and National Poverty Center
Philip N. Jefferson, Swarthmore College
Marie T. Mora, Texas-Pan American
Ronald Oaxaca, University of Arizona
Lashawn Richburg-Hayes, MDRC
Cecilia Elena Rouse, Princeton University
Current Profile: Samuel L. Myers, Jr., Roy Wilkins Professor of Human Relations and Social Justice in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota
Dr. Samuel L. Myers, Jr. has studied economics since he was a child. His home was one of the best research facilities and libraries to be found by a grade-schooler because Myers grew up surrounded by the books, research, and philosophies of his father, a well-known African American economist, Samuel Myers, Sr.
Myers, Sr. studied under John D. Black, John Kenneth Galbraith and Joseph A. Schumpeter at Harvard where he earned a PhD in 1949. He was an economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, economics professor at Morgan State University, and financial adviser to Latin American countries during the Kennedy Administration. He was president of Bowie State University during turbulent years; in 1968 he successfully dispersed a student boycott. His work with President Jimmy Carter on Executive Order 12232 in support of historically black colleges and universities was a high point in his career. In 1994, Myers, Sr. received the NEA’s Samuel Z. Westerfield Award. Clearly, he has made significant contributions to the economics profession.
Perhaps the greatest of these contributions is his son, Samuel L. Myers, Jr., who has distinguished himself in ways...
