W. Montague Cobb (1904–1990): Physical Anthropologist, Anatomist, and Activist

Abstract

William Montague Cobb's life and work reflect a profound integration of art, literature, social activism, and science. This article presents some of the highlights of his academic development and professional contributions. We have considered his early academic development within the contexts of the formative years of American physical anthropology, Howard University Medical School, and the social issues in American society that influenced Cobb. His approaches to teaching, anatomical and anthropological research, and medicine are unique, and yet are closely reasoned and creative reflections of the major currents of academe and the broader society with which he dealt. Imbued with a sense of social responsibility, Cobb's applied anthropology involved the accumulation of extensive data on the one hand, and the formation of organizations for social activism on the other. It was directed toward solving problems of health care and racism. His work thereby served to balance the widespread distortion and neglect of medical and racial problems facing A fro-America between 1930 and the present day. He was also a principal builder of black medical and scientific institutions, and he preserved the record of his coworkers' contributions through his many biographies. This work represents no more than a sketch of his rich and prolific career (during which he produced more than 1,100 publications); the emphasis of this biographical study has been to ascertain the circumstances and attitudes that helped mold the first Afro-American Ph.D. in physical anthropology.

Full text

W. Montague Cobb (1904-1990):
Physical Anthropologist, Anatomist, and Activist
[originally published in American Anthropologist, 96:74-96, 1994]
LESLEY M. RANKIN-HILL
University of Oklahoma, Norman
MICHAEL L. BLAKEY
Howard University
William Montague Cobb’s life and work reflect a profound integration of art, literature, social activism, and science. This
article presents some of the highlights of his academic development and professional contributions. We have considered his
early academic development within the contexts of the formative years of American physical anthropology, Howard University
Medical School, and the social issues in American society that influenced Cobb. His approaches to teaching, anatomical and
anthropological research, and medicine are unique, and yet are closely reasoned and creative reflections of the major currents
of academe and the broader society with which he dealt. Imbued with a sense of social responsibility, Cobb’s applied
anthropology involved the accumulation of extensive data on the one hand, and the formation of organizations for social
activism on the other. It was directed toward solving problems of health care and racism. His work thereby served to balance
the widespread distortion and neglect of medical and racial problems facing Afro-America between 1930 and the present day.
He was also a principal builder of black medical and scientific institutions, and he preserved the record of his coworkers’
contributions through his many biographies. This work represents no more than a sketch of his rich and prolific career (during
which he produced more than 1,100 publications); the emphasis of this biographical study has been to ascertain the
circumstances and attitudes that helped mold the first Afro-American Ph.D. in physical anthropology.
Not many men are able to prove, by their own example,
that, despite the wisdom of the Good Book, a prophet
can sometimes be “not without honour – even [sic] in
his own country.” ... To fewer still is it possible to ...
[be] named as “one of the most influential Negroes in
the United States.” ... Montague Cobb built up a
collection of over 600 documented skeletons and a
comparative anatomy museum in the gross anatomy
laboratory. His anatomical researches have dealt with
collections of human materials in American institutions,
cadaver demography, comparative dental anatomy,
ageing changes in the bones of the human skeleton and
the physical anthropology of the American Negro ...
and indeed he is, recognized as the principal historian
of the American Negro in medicine. [Tobias 1977:1]
WILLIAM MONTAGUE COBB’S CAREER
from its inception paralleled nearly the entire
history of professional physical anthropology in
the United States. As a leading activist scholar
in the Afro-American community and the only
black physical anthropologist Ph.D. before the
Korean War, Cobb was the sole representative of
Afro-American perspectives in physical
anthropology for many years. W. Montague
Cobb exemplified the orientation of the physical
anthropologist of the 1930s. Grounded in
anatomy and medicine prior to the maturing of a
separate bioanthropological curriculum, Cobb
was part of a generation that linked the
“founding fathers” of American physical
anthropology to all of its succeeding generations.
Yet, he is unique not only for being the only
professional Afro-American physical
anthropologist in the early years of the
discipline, but also for pioneering approaches
and accomplishments in human biology and
health. Cobb characterized himself as “marching
to the beat of a different drummer.”
William Montague Cobb, A.B., M.D.,
Ph.D., became the first Distinguished Professor
of Anatomy at Howard University in 1969. He
was Distinguished Professor Emeritus from 1973
until his death in 1990. In 1980 he received the
Henry Gray Award, conferred by the American
Association of Anatomists for outstanding
contributions to the field of anatomy. He
accrued over 100 other honors and citations,
including many of paramount distinction. He
served as president of the NAACP (1976-1982),
the American Association of Physical
Anthropologists (1957-1959), and the
Anthropological Society of Washington (1949-
1951 ). He served also as editor of the Journal
of the National Medical Association for 28 years
(1949-1977). Cobb chaired the Department of
Anatomy of Howard University College of
Medicine from 1947-1969. He was the author of
1,100 publications on diverse topics and taught
over 6,000 anatomy students. His influence as
an organizer and advocate for health
improvements and civil rights was felt and
acknowledged by leaders in government, the
military, the world of letters, law, medicine, and
the general public.
An extraordinary man of wit and energy, the
sum of his work assures his place among the
greatest American scholars. In this article we
provide a primary accounting of key aspects of
his rich career as a pioneer Afro-American
anthropologist based on the edited transcripts of

six hours of formal interviews, bibliographic
research, and literature reviews of selected
publications. Interviews were conducted at his
home in 1985. Interview questions were
submitted in advance and structured the initial
interviews. Important issues and questions were
pursued in subsequent interviews. The
interviews were transcribed and then edited by
the authors; the transcripts are now archived at
the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at
Howard University in Washington, D.C., with
other Cobb documents, and will be referred to as
“CPRHBI or II 1985” [Cobb Papers Rankin-Hill
and Blakey transcripts one or two 1985].
Bibliographic research included a search for
Cobb’s publications, many provided by Cobb
himself and others located at diverse libraries
throughout the Washington, D.C., area. This
search was based on a preliminary draft of
Cobb’s composite vitae including publications,
formal presentations, awards, and offices. The
literature review focused primarily on
publications that were (1) distinctly physical
anthropological and (2) clearly applications of
physical anthropology / anatomy to civil rights,
social inequality, and education. Many
discussions with Dr. Cobb as teacher, colleague,
and friend have also influenced our
understanding of the “Cobbian” worldview.
The analysis of Cobb’s influences and
contributions in this article is preliminary; a far
more extensive text would be required to bring
so complex and prolific a scholar into focus.
This article presents Cobb’s recollections,
integrated with our descriptions of the historic
context of his education and scientific career,
highlighting what we believe to be key aspects of
the history of physical anthropology in America.
We started out with the goals of collecting
Cobb’s views on physical anthropology within a
historical setting and attempting to have him
recreate for us the personalities, interactions, and
issues of the emerging discipline during his early
years. In most instances, it is the events, people,
and issues Cobb himself considered most
important that we have selected for this article.
We will also examine the corpus of Montague
Cobb’s work as it represents an Afro-American
genre of anthropology, much of which remains
forward-thinking and current.
Our specific emphases in this article include
Cobb’s participation in the early history of
American physical anthropology and his
relationship to its founding fathers and his
teachers Todd and Hrdli…ka; his views on the
relationship between physical anthropology and
anatomy, and anatomy as a key to understanding
his universe; his roles in professional
associations and civil rights programs; his early
approaches to applied anthropology and its
relationship to his theoretical and
methodological approaches; and his utilization of
both the Afro-American and Euro-American
professional and political organizations within
which he worked for social change.
Physical Anthropology: Historical Background
Montague Cobb entered graduate school
during the very same year that physical
anthropology was founded as an autonomous
profession in the United States. The field had
come far in some ways; it had been infused by
Darwinian theory, mounting hominid fossil
evidence, the discovery of blood groups and
Mendelian genetics, and government support for
anthropometric surveys. However, the
tremendous emphasis placed on craniometric
studies (which sought to determine phylogenetic
and mental differences in racial, subracial, and
institutionalized groups) had not changed much
since Samuel Morton’s studies in the 1830s.
Morton’s original work and compendium,
published posthumously by Nott and Gliddon
(1854), served to legitimize slavery by claiming
innate differences in African and European
mental capacities. Its support for the South’s
“peculiar institution” was substantial enough for
it to have been hailed by the Charleston Medical
Journal (Gould 1981) and to have brought forth
a lengthy counter-response from Frederick
Douglass (1950 [1854]).
Following a lull in American studies during
the Reconstruction (Hrdli…ka 1918), craniology
became popular again at the turn of the 20th
century and served anew to justify class, racial,
and subracial (immigrant versus American-born
whites) inequalities. Thus, the continuity of
interest in the size and shape of the head was
influenced by social inequality, albeit
transformed from a means of legitimating
slavery on its last legs to the inequities of urban-
industrial monopoly capitalism in its nascency.
Ales Hrdli…ka (1869-1943), the leading
American physical anthropologist during these
early years (1910-1930), was the first curator in
physical anthropology at the Bureau of American
Ethnology in the U.S. National Museum of the
Smithsonian Institution. Hrdli…ka, a medical
doctor who received training in anthropology at
the Ecole d’anthropologie de Paris and the
Laboratoire d’anthropologie (“Broca’s Institute”

as Hrdli…ka referred to it [Spencer 1979]) , firmly
believed in the innate superiority of
academicians (Hrdli…ka 1941), men (Hrdli…ka
1925a), and “native”or “old American” whites
(Hrdli…ka 1925b). Although his craniometric
methodology was deeply flawed by a priori
biodeterministic assumptions, such results
captured the popular and scientific imagination
of the time (see Blakey 1987).
Nevertheless, material support for physical
anthropology remained modest, especially when
compared to that of the eugenics movement
(applied social Darwinism), which was making
the same biodeterministic claims but which was
more highly politicized and popular in elite
philanthropic circles. Indeed, the rapid growth
of the field of genetics was dependent on the
movement’s support (Allen 1975). Although
often at odds with the eugenics leadership,
Hrdli…ka supported its most virulently racist
spokesmen, Charles B. Davenport (1886-1944)
and Madison Grant (1865-1937), when
influencing the formation of the Anthropology
Committee of the National Research Council
(NRC). The NRC had been established by
President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 to foster the
development of the sciences that could aid in
World War I. The NRC was a natural vehicle for
Hrdli…ka’s efforts to advance the credibility and
support for his field. Hrdli…ka’s goals at the time
were to have physical anthropology recognized
as a distinct discipline and area of research; to
establish an American journal of physical
anthropology; and to establish a national institute
of physical anthropology. In 1918 he founded
the American Journal of Physical Anthropology,
which served as organ for the NRC committee.
The first issues of the journal contained sections
devoted to war anthropology and eugenics, with
Davenport on its editorial board and Hrdli…ka in
editorial control (Blakey 1987; Spencer 1979).
In contrast to this mainstream, Franz Boas at
Columbia University was publishing antiracist
studies that stressed the developmental plasticity
of body and mind. The conflicts that arose in the
scientific literature are no less revealing of the
political differences between the “Boasian
school” and the “Washington-Harvard axis” (of
which Hrdli…ka and Earnest Hooton [1887-1954]
are representative) than were their battles to
block or oust each other from major committees
of the NRC and the National Academy of
Sciences (Spencer 1979; Stocking 1968).
Although Boasian liberalism would capture the
public imagination and institutional support in
the years surrounding World War II, the
mainstream scientific racism that emanated from
Washington and Harvard would dominate the
scene during these early years.
Hrdli…ka dreamed of establishing an
anthropological institute in the United States like
that in France. He showed himself to be an
institution-builder of “missionary zeal”
(Montagu 1944). Hrdli…ka had outlined the scope
and aims of physical anthropology in 1918 and
1921. He felt the need to branch out from
medicine and anatomy, where physical
anthropology had its first academic base, and to
attract the best medical students to the new
career. Physical anthropology, he wrote, was
intended to have practical application through
racial eugenics, directed at engineering the
biology and social “progress” of American
society (Hrdli…ka 1918; also see Blakey 1987).
These are the same general concepts that would
form the ideological underpinnings of racial
segregation, the Ku Klux Klan, and European
fascism (Patterson 1970 [1951]).
At the American Association for the
Advancement of Science’s Section H meetings
(Anthropology) in 1928, Hrdli…ka urged the
creation of a new and separate association and an
American institute of physical anthropology in
Washington, D.C. A resolution to this end was
adopted and a committee was formed.
Committee members included [Fay-Cooper
Cole] (1881-1961), Davenport, George A.
Dorsey (1868-1931), William King Gregory
(1876-1970), Earnest Hooton (1887-1954), and
Robert J. Terry (1870-1866), with Hrdli…ka as
chairman and Dudl[e]y Morton (1884 - ) as
secretary (Spencer 1979:745-748). Morton
assembled a list of 58 prospective members for
the new association. The highly regarded T.
Wingate Todd (1885-1938), who would never
have favored instituting a professional separation
between physical anthropology and anatomy,
was conspicuously absent from the list. The
American Association of Physical
Anthropologists was founded in November of
1929, and Hrdli…ka’s American Journal of
Physical Anthropology was unanimously
adopted as its official organ. This event marks
the birth of professional physical anthropology in
the United States. Hrdlicka never got his
institute, but he continued to campaign for it
until his death in 1943 (Spencer 1979:745-748).
During this very same autumn of 1929, a
young Afro-American physician, William
Montague Cobb, arrived at Western Reserve
University to study anatomy and physical
anthropology under T. Wingate Todd. The

circumstances and events that brought him to
venture into the study of humankind at this place
and time were as much circumscribed by the
social realities and historical moment as was the
development of the field.
Becoming an Anthropologist
William Montague Cobb was born at 1326 T
Street in the northwest quadrant of Washington,
D.C., on October 12, 1904. His mother,
Alexzine (Montague) Cobb, was descended from
an old Massachusetts family that recognized a
partly native American ancestry. His father,
William Elmer Cobb, was a native of Selma,
Alabama, who had come to Washington, D.C., in
the late 19th century and was well known as the
“one-horse operator” of an important printing
business for the black community. The young
“Monty” grew up in this secure but less than
affluent family.
When he was still too young to read, Cobb
became fascinated by pictures of human
variation in his grandfather’s book on the animal
kingdom (Goodrich 1868). He recalls that it was
the question of race that led him to anthropology.
The book’s drawings of racial types in traditional
dress represented each race (as Cobb describes
it) “with equal dignity” (CPRHBII1985:7). He
would never cease to be fascinated by the
pedagogical utility of drawing, whether in his
anatomy classroom or in cave drawings as a
means of instruction by the Paleolithic hunter.
As Cobb matured, he encountered directly
the institutions of racism and segregation. When
the time came to enter primary school, he was
perplexed that he could not go to the nearest
school, which he had often watched in
anticipation. Over the coming years he would
learn that, in his own society, the rich variation
in human anatomy that had so pleased him was
the basis for differentiating human worth,
opportunity, and life experiences. This
interested, perhaps angered, and certainly
motivated Montague Cobb to set his life on a
course to expose and destroy racism and replace
it with a more sophisticated understanding of
human biology. As importantly, Cobb was
impressed in childhood by the fact that doctors
could make people well, which, he recalled,
struck him simply ‘‘as a good thing.” His
perception of the status of the physician in his
community, furthermore, fueled his aspirations
to a medical career.
Cobb received a diploma from Dunbar High
School, the summit of Afro-American secondary
education, “possibly the best high school in the
world” in 1921. During this period there were
few colleges where blacks could teach, and many
outstanding teachers with higher degrees came to
Dunbar. An academic high school in the
tradition of W. E. B. Dubois, its alumni read like
a social register of the so-called “talented tenth.”
Among these was a hefty proportion of the few
who were chosen (partly by Dunbar’s faculty) to
attend the best black colleges and white colleges
that would admit blacks. Some returned to
recruit and share the news, and Cobb was
particularly impressed by the Amherst men, such
as his life-long friend and fellow Dunbar
graduate Charles Drew. Montague Cobb
received the A.B. degree from Amherst College
in 1925.
While at Amherst, Cobb took advantage of a
broad curriculum of classical scholarship and
training in European arts, languages, literature,
philosophy, and history, as well as in the
sciences, which were then only in the process of
taking on their modern forms. He also won three
championships as a cross-country runner and two
in boxing. His eclecticism was by no means
new. He had developed skill as a violinist and a
boxer in his youth (he had taught himself boxing
from a manual at Dunbar as the need arose from
caste-class conflict in the neighborhood). In
many respects, which can only be touched on
here, Cobb made the most of every opportunity
to achieve the rich intellectual, activist, and
humanitarian qualities of his heroes and kindred
spirits of both the European and Harlem
renaissances.
1
On graduation from Amherst College, Cobb
received the Blodgett Scholarship for proficiency
in biology at the prestigious Woods Hole Marine
Biology Laboratory in Massachusetts, where he
was able to pursue his interest in embryology.
There he found his way to the distinguished
Howard University biologist Ernest Everett Just
(see Manning 1983 for discussion on Just’s
contributions to biology). Cobb’s meticulous
notes and drawings of the fertilization and
development of a broad spectrum of marine
species show an excellent grasp of biology,
artistic talent, attention to detail, and joy in
learning. There he recorded, by the hour and
minute, each phase of development from zygote
to embryo as he had observed them
microscopically.
1
The term for a prominently creative period in American
history; Harlem in the 1920s developed and attracted the
major Afro-American authors, poets, performers, and artists
of the day.

Cobb recalled an experiment in 1925 in
which the young Just, and a 21-year-old,
somewhat talkative Cobb, stood squatting in the
Woods Hole lagoon, awaiting the habitual
approach of spawning sea worms (Nereis
limbata) in the middle of the night. As Cobb
recounted their work, the experienced Just noted
the first signs of their approach and quietly
motioned to Cobb. Within moments the moon-
glazed water’s edge became thick with the
swarm. They rapidly identified males and
females, netted them before they could mate, and
deposited them into separate sample jars. No
sooner had they completed their collection than
the remaining swarm became frenzied with
mating; the swirling mass released their gametes,
suddenly making the water around them milky
white. Of this occasion Cobb remarked, with
characteristic drama, as Shakespeare spoke of
Romeo and Juliet, “violent delights have violent
ends, and in their triumph, die” – as, in fact,
Nereis limbata do after spawning. Just, Cobb,
and other students would then spend a vigilant
night in the laboratory, observing and recording
the development of the sea worms from the
moment of fertilization.
The following summer, Cobb helped pay for
his medical education by working as a waiter on
a Great Lakes steamship. A racial division of
labor existed on board ship in which there were
black waiters, Chinese cooks, Irish deckhands,
Scotch-lrish engineers, French-Canadian
stewards, and English-Canadian officers. This
scene (as recounted to us), with its almost
surrealistic moments of group conflict and
cooperation, represented for Cobb a deliberate
and exacting divide-and-rule policy. Later that
summer, he traveled to Saskatchewan, where he
signed on to a crew of grain harvesters and
earned wages on the rugged and sometimes
volatile Canadian frontier.
From Howard University Medical School, to
which he would later devote his entire
professional career, Cobb earned an M.D. in
1929. His work was so outstanding that he was
given an instructorship in embryology during his
last year of medical study. In 1927, immediately
following the completion of the new medical
building, Howard Medical School was at the
nexus of a dramatic transformation. Mordecai
Johnson, the first Afro-American president of the
university, recognized that the often patronizing,
white-dominated, part-time faculty retarded the
medical school from reaching its full potential.
Johnson was committed to transforming the
institution into one in which Afro-American
physicians acceded to full responsibility in the
medical school’s operation and development.
The newly appointed dean of the school, Numa
P. G. Adams, was assigned the task of
reorganization. He set out to recruit the best-
trained black faculty in the country. While there
were few Afro-American Ph.D.s in medical
fields, the college had a number of outstanding
students whom, if opportunities for graduate
study could be secured, were potentially the kind
of faculty the college needed (Cobb 1951a).
Three were chosen for the development of
the department of anatomy; R. L McKinney
received special training in microscopic anatomy
at Chicago, M. W. Young was trained in
neuroanatomy at Michigan, and Cobb was sent
to Western Reserve University with a fellowship
from the General Education Board to receive
training in gross anatomy and the then-nascent
physical anthropology. Adams, who had been
instrumental in nurturing the young Cobb’s
interest for physical anthropology, made
arrangements for him to receive his training
under T. Wingate Todd, one of the most
prominent members of the first generation of
physical anthropologists in the United States.
Todd was distinctively progressive for this
period. In his October 28, 1930, address to the
Association of Negro Life and History, entitled
“The Folly of Complacency,” he writes,
“Anthropology can be hammered into an
instrument for solving our most pressing
problems of population, race or social status.
But if it is not hammered with the greatest care
and skill it may turn out to be a dangerous
weapon wounding alike him who wields it and
the victims on whom it is applied” (Todd
1930:3).
Todd’s studies showed that there were no
“racial” differences in the development of the
black brain and the white brain, but that “a
misadventure due to defective growth in
childhood induced by unsatisfactory
circumstances of life” producing laggard growth
in the brain-case of some black children had
been misinterpreted and generalized (Todd
1930:5). He was a strong critic of the racial
determinism among colleagues, such as
Hrdli…ka, and lent his anthropological studies to
the support of racial equality: “Our researches
carried on over a large amount of material,
demonstrate that what happens in the White
happens in the Negro and at the same time, so
that we come to realize there is but one
humanity, one experiment of nature, whatever

the color of the result!” (Todd 1930:5). Cobb
recollected:
I came into the field through Dr. [Numa] P. G. Adams,
the first Black Dean of an approved medical school.
And I was getting ready to open my office for private
practice here in Washington, having passed the state
board, when Dr. Adams newly appointed, asked me if I
would be interested in a full-time academic career. And,
I said “yes if I could pick my field.” He said, “What do
you want?” I said, “Anatomy.” [CPRI-IBI 1985:1]
A place for advanced training was sought which
would afford sound work in gross anatomy and
its expansion physical anthropology. It first
appeared that there was no institution in the
United States where this kind of training could
be obtained by a Howard man. Then Dr. Adams
remembered that he had met a man in Cleveland,
a very busy man, of compelling personality.... It
was a great joy to discover that Dr. Todd was
already so advanced in his thinking and had
amply demonstrated by his published work that
prevalent American concepts in respect to race
and human potential had no place in his
laboratory. More than three decades ago
Wingate Todd in word and deed lived the
principles which underlie the great social
changes of our time and foreshadow those yet to
come. Two decades after his passing he is still
the embodiment of the anatomist, the physical
anthropologist, the medical educator, and the
physician of the future. [Cobb 1959:237]
[These] proved to be the two most rewarding and
exciting years of my life. I would major in physical
anthropology, [with] a minor in neuroanatomy and a
minor in dental anatomy [he also served as an
apprentice in gross anatomy]. [CPRHBI 1985:12,
CPRHBII1985:18]
And one of the most remarkable things about Todd, was
he did so much in such a short time ... and I can say
from this perspective, only now, are the fruits of Todd’s
work being realized. Because assessing age and race in
a skeleton are always difficult things, and the critics
abounded then. But he had a set of skulls that he called
the Humiliators ... they looked like one thing, but he
had photographs and documents to show what they
were. And he would have the experts look at these
skulls and say what they were, and prove them wrong....
The Todd laboratory was way ahead. It was
interdisciplinary already. Of course now they [physical
anthropologists] are coming around to it. [CPRHBI
1985:2,22]
The Hamann museum was a working laboratory where
the student of medicine and of human biology in its
broader aspects could explore the biological processes
which produced clinical conditions. Structure
portrayed function on the dissecting table, under the
microscope and in the successful adaptations for
survival represented by various orders of mammals and
primitive man. The United States had a modern
anatomical laboratory which was carrying forward to
new expression the Hunterian spirit and principles.
[Cobb 1959:235]
Today the Hamann- Todd collections are
housed at the Cleveland Museum of Natural
History, which is associated with Case Western
Reserve University. This collection is one of the
two largest skeletal populations available for
study, along with the Terry Collection at the
Smithsonian Institution.
Cobb’s dissertation, a massive survey of
anthropological materials and methods of
documentation, processing, and preservation,
could not have been better chosen for one whose
mission was to establish a Laboratory of
Anatomy and Physical Anthropology at Howard
University (Cobb 1936a, 1951a, 1959). He
believed such a laboratory would allow each
Afro-American scholar to make his or her own
“contribution not defense” (Cobb 1936a:10) in
the debates on racial biology.
He began work on his laboratory
immediately when he returned to Howard in
1932. He also continued his research in Todd’s
laboratory on human craniofacial union (suture
closure) and began another survey of skeletal
collections at the U.S. National Museum
(Smithsonian Institution) under Hrdli…ka.
After receiving the Ph.D. in 1932, I returned to Reserve
for a portion of each summer [for six years] for further
studies on the Hamann-Todd collection, under
appointments as a fellow or an Associate in Anatomy.
My papers on the cranio-facial union were completed in
this way.... And I think two of my best papers are “The
Cranio-facial Union and the Maxillary Tuber in
Mammals” (1943a) and “Cranio-facial Union in Man”
(1940). Race is not involved in it and you can do that
on simple anatomy. [CPRHBI 1985:11;
CPRHBII1985:8]
“Cranio-facial Union in Man” (1940) and its
companion, “Cranio-facial Union and the
Maxillary Tuber in Mammals” (1943a)
established Montague Cobb as a functional
anatomist. These publications were based on a
comprehensive study of 1,100 mammalian crania
and several hundred human crania from the
Hamann mammalian collection and the Hamann-
Todd human skeletal collection. The basis of
this rescarch was the morphological and
functional examination of the “cranio-facial
hafting area” of the skull. This area is where the
“cerebral” cranium (braincase) and the “visceral”
cranium (face and jaw) are joined. Cobb
described these as two parts of the cranium with
different functions and patterns of growth that

came together in structural unity. The braincase
grew rapidly and remained fairly stable after
postnatal development, while the face and jaw
grew slowly and could be modified throughout
life by environmental factors. Cobb considered
the morphology and function of this anatomical
feature as significant in evolutionary terms. This
area of anatomical research had been given little
consideration at the time. In the human article,
he establishes the different patterns between
humans and other mammalia; other mammalian
orders exhibit the pneumatization (expansion of
internal air passages and sinuses) of the crania
and the development of bony external
reinforcements (i.e., crests). He then
systematically explores the craniofacial union in
humans and its developmental changes
throughout the growth process. The mammalian
article compares the functional morphology of
the cranial-facial union in 11 orders, including
several primate suborders.
As in much of Cobb’s writing, these articles
are elegant in their clear and poetic style and
tightly packed substantive content. These papers
give an analysis of the functional,
developmental, and evolutionary
interrelationships of the dentition and bones of
the face and cranium. Cobb’s enthusiasm for
learning is apparent in his close attention to
detail and fascination with the integration of
ontogenetic, phylogenetic, structural, and
functional aspects of craniofacial anatomy. We
were unable to identify a more comprehensive
study on the subject. Craniofacial growth and
development remains a significant area of
research in contemporary physical anthropology
(i.e., Kolar 1987; Rightmeier 1987). However,
perhaps in part because the majority of these
contemporary studies focus on craniofacial
developmental pathology, referencing of Cobb’s
contributions remains obscure.
Cobb continued his work on critical issues
in skeletal biology, utilizing the scarce but vital
resources of skeletal collections. Cobb recalled,
I enjoyed the cordial relationship with Dr. Todd’s
successor, Dr. Norman Hoerr, a histochemist, as I had
with Dr. Todd.... At the time of Dr. Todd’s passing in
1938 (Cobb 1939c), the human collection at Reserve,
numbered over 3300 individuals. I embarked on a
comprehensive study of suture closure…. After
completing the Reserve skulls, I went to St. Louis to do
the same on the 1500 skulls in the collections at
Washington University assembled by Dr. Robert J.
Terry [now curated at the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, D.C.). I enjoyed fine relationships there
with Dr. Terry, Dr. Edmund Cowdry and Dr. Mildred
Trotter, as well as Dr. George D. Williams and Dr.
Seib. [CPRHBII 1985:10]
Preliminary reports on these studies were made at the
meetings of the International Gerontological
Congresses in London and Merano, Italy. This is the
only study of which I am aware which assembled data
on all skulls in both collections for a single project.
[CPRHBII 1985: 11]
In one preliminary report, “Suture Closure
as a Biological Phenomenon” (1957a), Cobb
presented an analysis of a sample consisting of
2,351 crania of males and females of white and
”American Negro stock.” The analysis was based
on 104 separate observations of 22 sutures.
Although it is only a short meetings paper, Cobb
clearly establishes that utilizing suture closure as
a method of age estimation was unreliable
because of specific biological factors. These
factors are based on basic principles of bone
growth, the functional morphology of the crania,
the functional significance of suture closure, and
the overall process of human growth. These
studies were significant contributions and some
of his colleagues continue(d) to reference this
research in lectures (i.e., J. Lawrence Angel’s
forensic anthropology classes) and publications
(i.e., St. Hoyme and Iscan 1989).
Emerging with Anthropology
This was no ordinary stage on which Cobb
began his career. He entered the field when it
first emerged as a recognized profession. Yet,
having studied principally under Todd (who
opposed the professional separation of physical
anthropology from anatomy) contributed to
Cobb’s continuing belief that physical
anthropology should be a subdiscipline of
anatomy, and the latter should form the core of
physical anthropological training.
Cobb encountered fundamental differences
between Todd and Hrdli…ka in their racial
perspectives as well:
At that time I didn’t know all the inner workings of
these personalities. Hrdli…ka had wanted a Survey of
Human Materials in American Institutions Available for
Study. Todd was the chairman of that committee. I
didn’t know then that Todd was familiar with
Hrdli…ka’s attitudes. But he put the load on Hrdli…ka by
assigning me, to do the work of that committee.
[CPRHBI 1985:20; CPRHBII 1985:11]
While reflecting on his early career, Cobb
stated that
now I have just understood in the last couple of years or
so, why Todd gave me the job of the committee of
which he was chairman. He turned that over to me

because I was right down here near Hrdli…ka. But he
also wanted to see how Hrdli…ka would treat me.... So, I
went down to see the great man. And he said in his
thick German accent “well, you have been up there with
the Professor Todd, a brilliant man, with far too many
radical ideas. Now if you will come down and talk with
me, I will show you the way.” Alright, well I did not
really know all that [that Hrdli…ka knew “the way”
versus Todd], but he never did anything unfair, see?
[CPRHBI 1985:20]
“Hrdli…ka’s attitudes” are exemplified in a
lecture given at American University in the
spring of 1921, where he claimed that
there is no question that there are today already retarded
peoples, retarded races, and that there are advanced
races, and that the differences between them tend rather
to increase than to decrease.... And there is no
acceptable possibility ... that would make the white man
wait upon the Japanese or Chinaman who is only a little
bit behind, or the Negro who is a long way behind.
[Hrdli…ka 1921:12-14]
When assigned to review the literature on
the Negro by the NRC, Hrdli…ka concluded that
“the real problem of the American Negro lies in
his brain” (Hrdli…ka 1927:208-209). Little
wonder that, when conducting his study of “The
Full-Blood American Negro” at Howard
University, Hrdli…ka received less cooperation
from his subjects, whom he described as “semi-
civilized, suspicious, scattered free laborers and
servants” than “among the pliant, trusting
savage” (Hrdli…ka 1928:15).
Historians will agree that, once having
reached a conclusion, Hrdli…ka’s thinking would
never be altered (Schultz 1945; Spencer 1979).
His intransigence extended from his view that
North America was populated no earlier than the
Archaic period, to the Victorian clothing he wore
long after it was fashionable. (Cobb attributed
the peculiarity of Hrdli…ka’s attire to his
shopping habits; “Hrdli…ka with his formal
collars would walk down Pennsylvania Avenue
shopping where he could get the cheapest things”
(CPRHBI 1985:21).
Then one day I said “Dr. Hrdli…ka, you accept me
alright, why do you have these restrictive ideas about so
called pure Negroes?” [i.e., Hrdli…ka 1927, 1928].
“Well the Negro is alright when he’s had the hardships
the white man has had. You have the vigor of the
hybrid,” he said. Well anytime you see anything you
cannot explain, you invent an explanation. [CPRHBI
1985:21]
Hrdli…ka would publish much of Cobb’s
dissertation Human Archives (1932) in the
American Journal of Physical Anthropology in
1933 (“Human Materials in American
Institutions Available for Study”). Perhaps, as
suggested above, the fact of Cobb’s obvious
admixture and his association with Todd made it
easier for Hrdli…ka to accept Cobb and his work,
which was a much needed survey of skeletal
materials that today remains unparalleled in its
comprehensiveness.
In 1939 Cobb gave his own analysis of “The
Negro as a Biological Element of the American
Population” (1939a), in which he profiled the
biology and demography of the Afro-American
population of the 1930s and showed the
historical and social processes that led to its
composition. “Negroes” are described as Afro-
Euro-Indian hybrids who, since the end of
slavery, had become an intrabreeding group.
Cobb argues that the selective bottleneck of
slavery enhanced (if anything) their physical
strength and mental ability, and he even goes so
far as to pose a biodeterministic argument for
“special aptitudes” for music and dance. He
explains the socioeconomic and demographic
factors that have enhanced Afro-American
fertility. Rather than suggesting inferiority, the
intellectual achievements of Afro-Americans
seem extraordinary in light of the barriers to
social and economic achievements that are
described. Ultimately, the Afro-American
population is shown to be highly adaptable. In
contrast, Cobb questions the humaneness and
efficiency of a West European civilization
predicated on oppression, exploitation, and
repeated wars of conquest. “The Negro as a
Biological Element of the American Population”
was designed to counter arguments that
American blacks had not been exposed to
European civilization sufficiently to gain
“competence in management of the complexities
of modern life” (1939a:344). Finally, he
predicted that Afro-Americans will increase as a
percentage of the population, and that the
American population will become increasingly
mixed as immigration is restricted and attempts
to eliminate minorities remain futile. Despite not
foreseeing the changes in American immigration
policies, his predictions clearly represent the
demographic profile of contemporary America.
Associations and Meetings in the Early Years
The first meeting Cobb attended of the
American Association of Physical
Anthropologists (AAPA) was the association’s
second meeting in December 1930, which was
held at Western Reserve Medical School during
Cobb’s tenure (the meeting was held at the time

of the AAAS meetings and in special
collaboration with Section H-Anthropology).
Hrdli…ka gave a public lecture concerning
“children who run on all fours.” Cobb regularly
attended these and other professional meetings
after that. His recollections of these early
meetings provided a means of reconstructing
some of the issues, contexts, personalities, and
interpersonal dynamics of the period. In
addition, these recollections provide a window
on Cobb’s own perspectives on the actors
involved, and reveal a distinctly Afro-American
view of the problems and issues current at that
time.
Now there were no separate groups. The sessions were
all one and everybody participated. So that if a concept
of being a close knit group exists, that was a natural
result of everybody being there.... However, there was
always mutual respect in the original group of physical
anthropologists; to describe them as close knit, I do not
know that that applies.... Now, those were always very
rewarding sessions. And, I would say that they were
always clean cut, they were not taking any crusading
attitudes on race or anything like that. [CPRHBI
1985:6-8]
Now, Boas never had any sense of humor, and ...
neither did Hrdli…ka you see. [What was] entertaining
as well as rewarding was to see a debate between
Hrdli…ka and Boas. [For example], Hrdli…ka was for
standardizing all measurements so that all
measurements would be comparable.... He put out a
book on that called Anthropometry... .And Boas said
that you determine the measurement by what you want
to discover. And they had it out. Boas had had his
stroke by that time and that was a little sad. So
Hrdli…ka began to show how Davenport and Love did
their Army Anthropometry series “those measurements
were no good” [he said].... So, it got very heated there
for a while. But Raymond Pearl ... a mathematician
who really had a superior mind, would pour oil on the
waters by saying, “that if you had enough
measurements, the volume of the measurements and the
errors would cancel each other out.” But on that one, I
would say it was a draw. Because if you want to study
the dermatoglyphics of the palm and the major lines
there is no need for some standardized measurements.
You put down what you want to find out and devise a
measurement to take that. [CPRIIBI1985:6-7]
It was at these meetings that Cobb would
begin many lifelong friendships. There were, of
course, his close neighbors and friends at the
Smithsonian, J. Lawrence Angel (1915-1986)
and T. Dale Stewart. Angel worked as an
adjunct member of the Department of Anatomy
at Howard Medical School for several years, in
addition to his museum curatorship. They each
became members of the Cosmos Club, where
Cobb often took his meals and entertained
guests. His regard for Stewart was high, also
partly because he was “a very gifted artist”
(CPRHBI 1985:5) who chose to do what he
enjoyed rather than pursue wealth, either as an
artist or as a physician (Stewart had earned an
M.D. from Johns Hopkins before he came to
work at the Smithsonian under Hrdli…ka).
Cobb’s admiration of the artist/scientist was
equally evident in his fascination with the works
of Vesalius and Leonardo Da Vinci (Cobb
1943b, 1944) as with that of his contemporaries.
“Now Adolph Schultz was a preeminent
anatomist at Johns Hopkins. He was a gifted
artist and did all of his own illustrations. He’s
got [drawings of] chimpanzees that will talk!”
(CPRHBI 1985:5). For his own part, Montague
Cobb would help “perfect the standard color
plate of the anatomy of the heart” (Morais
1978:2).
Many of his associations, however, were not
so gratifying. “When I applied to the
‘Anatomists’ a man held me up one year. And
later apologized for it and said it was not on
account of the racist stuff, I don’t know. But that
stuff was all around however, in the physical
anthropologists” (CPRHBI 1985:14).
Charles B. Davenport was the weakest of the lot.... He
went to Jamaica and wrote a book on race crossing
(Davenport and Steggerda 1929).... He came out with a
thesis that those who were more white could do more
complex problems, and Blacks could do simpler
problems. But the mulattoes were seen to have a little
difficulty, getting mixed up, and all that [expletive
deleted]. [CPRHBI 1985:5; CPRHBII 1985:10)
Gregory was a superb paleontologist.... [He] didn’t
show his true colors until ... the blood program came
out and the Red Cross planned to segregate blood [after
World War II], the physical anthropologists passed a
resolution [against the Red Cross]. And Bill Greulich
and Bill Howells very strongly supported it. But when
they appointed a committee to draft a resolution ...
William K. Gregory who I believe was then president
did not put me on the committee. [This was after Cobb
had been vice president of AAPA, and the issue was
well within his expertise].... I went to see him at the
American Museum.... He explained by saying “I just
didn’t.” However, I later learned that he was a realist
as a politician and you just do not put somebody in a
position where they can be effective. And Gregory did
not like the brother [Afro-Americans].... That’s
William King Gregory, a superb paleontologist.... His
volume on comparative dentition will stand today. But
he had that other side. I don’t recall any of the older
fellows who were bigots. And the man at Harvard ...
Coon, Carlton Coon. He redid Ripley’s Races of
Mankind. But when he came up for nomination, I
supported him. [CPRHBI 1985:5,9-10; CPRHBII
1985:5]
In 1953, I was placed on the council of AAAS.
And, I brought it up [the segregation issue] at
their meeting in Boston. And when I said that

they should not meet in Atlanta in ‘55, some of
the big shots said “what’s he talking about?”
And then it was explained that they could not
change the segregation laws of Atlanta. ... Well,
a deal was cooked up. All Blacks would stay at
Atlanta University and they would be admitted
to the meetings at the hotels but they could not
stay there. Gabriel Lasker was then Secretary of
Section H. Gabe said he would not prepare the
program if they went there. And I said I would
not attend.... So Section H had no program and
at that meeting the unexpected came in! Detle[v]
Bronk (President of Rockefeller University)
wrote a resolution stating that “the AAAS should
meet only in places where there will be free
association among scientists within and without
the places of meeting.” ... So they had to go by
mail vote, which came out overwhelmingly for
the adoption of the resolution. [CPRHBII
1985:26-27]
Incidentally, I have formed a fairly low opinion of
Margaret Mead. She had been elected to the board of
AAAS and the ASW [Anthropological Society of
Washington] sat us side by side at a dinner in her honor,
and she said to me, “Dr. Cobb, not all Negro leaders are
in agreement with your position [on integrated meeting
places].” I said, “Who for example?” She said, “Dr.
Channing Tobias.” I said, “Dr. Tobias? That seems very
strange, because we are good friends and he’s the
Chairman of the Board of the NAACP, I cannot
imagine him saying [that].” ... What she had done was
mix up Tobias with Al Maron, at Hampton. ... But this
lady is another one of those who apparently does not
know many brethren [blacks] and they all look alike to
her.” [CPRHBI 1985:30; CPRHBII 1985:27]
The Cobbian Perspective
In the 1930s, physical anthropology was
torn between at least two major approaches. The
“Boasian” approach stressed developmental
plasticity, environmental effects, and racial
equality. The mainstream evolutionary
approaches emphasizcd racial comparison,
biological determinism, and – in its usual form –
the racial “inferiority” of Negroes. The Boasian
trend was only beginning to take hold of the
public interest in the years approaching World
War II when his students, prominently including
Margaret Mead, utilized and publicized its
perspective (Drake 1980; Harris 1968; Stocking
1968, 1976). W. E. B. DuBois, like other
“vindicationist” Afro-American scholars, had
accepted and used Boas’s work since the turn of
the century (Drake 1980).
Cobb, on the other hand, had been trained
within the mainstream by the fair-minded Todd.
Cobb claimed no intellectual roots in the so-
called Boasian school and showed little interest
in sociocultural anthropology, in particular, or
the four-field approach, in general. There is,
nonetheless, biocultural integration in his work
that focuses on biological or medical
relationships in the history and structure of his
own industrial society, or biomedical
connections with artistic aesthetics and
philosophical generalities.
Yet, there was substantial agreement
between Cobb and the Boasians in contradiction
to mainstream racial-deterministic ideas. Both
Cobb and Boas emphasized an appreciation of
human diversity, equality, flexibility, and
creativity. In this vein, Montague Cobb’s article
on the significance (or insignificance) of race in
athletics (“Race and Runners” 1936b) remains
one of the most poignant counterarguments to
biological determinism as an explanation of
athletic abilities. “Race and Runners” was
written during the furor over the Olympic
triumph of Jesse Owens, in response to the view
that the emergent Olympic dominance of Afro-
American sprinters and broad jumpers between
1920 and 1936 was somehow due to racial
characteristics. For some, this might have
seemed a convenient example of black
superiority flying in the face of Nazi claims to
the contrary.
Cobb, however, applied the methodology of
physical anthropology to the problem. He tested
the hypothesis that there were basic anatomical
characteristics associated with race that would
determine the type of athletic abilities in
question. His methodological approach to
testing the hypothesis included: taking
anthropometric measurements of living
individuals (Jesse Owens, other athletes and
males of similar age and size); utilizing
anthropometric standards established by Todd
and Lindala (1928) for the Hamann- Todd
specimens as a comparative database of black
and white leg, foot, and heel lengths;
radiographic assessment; interobserver testing,
providing a series of radiographs (including
Jesse Owen’s) to another anatomist to attempt
identifying black and white “anatomical”
characteristics of the leg; an analysis of human
calf muscle anatomy; biomechanical assessment
of the morphology and function of the leg; the
incorporation of fledgling research on nerve
fibers and their role in neuromuscular
coordination; and personal histories of sprinters
and broad jumpers available at the time.
Cobb demonstrated that the average
differences (such as the lever function of heel

and foot) were too small or contradictory to
support racial determinism. Cobb personally
examined Jesse Owens’ anatomy to determine
that the longer calf muscles most commonly
associated with the Caucasian physique were
present in Owens, while a European Olympic
track star whom he had examined had a short-
bellied calf associated with Negroids. Relative
to the standards (average measurements) of
blacks and whites in the Hamann-Todd
Collection, Owens’ anatomy compared closest to
“Caucasoids” in some dimensions, yet measured
closest to “Negroids” in others. Here was an
example of the discordance of “racial” traits that
makes extrapolation from race to behavior
dubious.
Furthermore, the improvement in
performance, marked by the setting of
increasingly higher world records with each
Olympiad, clearly suggested to Cobb that
training was far more important in athletic
performance than racial or genetic endowment.
Cobb’s own experiences as a collegiate runner
and boxer doubtlessly influenced him to
undertake such an in-depth study. The
symbolism of athletics as a general index of
human capacities was as profound in the 20th
century as Cobb knew the Olympics to have
been in ancient Greece. The implications of
Cobb’s paper were not exclusive to the sports
arena but extended to the broader society and the
discipline.
We can only begin to explore the unique
combination of influences by which Cobb found
his way to the scientific support for human
equality, and how he proceeded from this
understanding to engage in political activism.
The seeds of his perspective began growing from
the social realities of his childhood. These views
were partly molded by the experience of being
raised in a well-developed Afro-American
community within a deeply racist and segregated
society. Having experienced firsthand both
black and white society, Cobb also knew by
observation the fallacy of black inferiority. The
“radical ideas” of T. Wingate Todd
complemented, reinforced, and gave anatomical
structure to Cobb’s antiracism and appreciation
of humankind. Cobb’s appreciation for the arts,
humanities, and athletics was often integrated to
give social meaning to anatomical form, and vice
versa.
The following partly characterize the
Cobbian tradition that is a particularly humane
and humanitarian concept of physical
anthropology and its applications.
1. An emphasis on Afro-Americans (the “Negro”) in
their biological diversity, with a discarding of
Hrdli…ka’s principal focus on the study of a pure
race (e.g., Cobb 1941, 1942a, 1942b).
2. A heightened emphasis on the social and historical
factors, relative to evolutionary factors, as major
forces affecting human biology (e.g., Cobb 1935,
1939a).
3. A thorough demonstration of human equality, not
only by presenting the positive attributes of Afro-
Americans and their plasticity as Boas had done
but uniquely balancing his argument by
recognizing weaknesses that were simultaneously
present in European society: “The defects of
modern European civilization are so obvious,
particularly in respect to its dependence on
exploration and periodic slaughter and its failure
to adjust population size and caliber to resources,
that while its material achievements excite
amazement, its social organization hardly evokes
excessive admiration” (Cobb 1939a:324).
4. Cobb developed in his research and leaching a rich
integration of art, literature, philosophy, history,
physical anthropology, and anatomy that has been
unusual among physical anthropologists.
Throughout the history of physical anthropology,
its practitioners have been more concerned with
the natural sciences than with the social sciences
or, least of all, the humanities. Without
questioning its integration with the natural
sciences, Cobb uses anatomy to explore beauty.
Other examples are illustrated in his published
leaching methods – “Graphic Approach,” (Cobb
1945); “Artistic Canons” (Cobb 1944); and
“Master Keys” (Cobb 1943b) – that integrate
anatomy with art, history, archeology, preventive
medicine, and clinical medicine. As a college
instructor, he was known to recite poetry and play
the violin to demonstrate points he wanted to
make regarding anatomy.
Applied Anthropology
Now I started out doing the things that had to be done
in the area of the Negro, but I was careful always to do
something that did not have to do with race [also]... But
because we had to get a little room, I began to be
offensive to some people. [Sometimes I would] “have
to swing a baseball bat to get a little room.” [CPRl1BI
1985:4, 11-12]
Cobb was one of the first, if not the first,
physical anthropologist to undertake a
sophisticated demographic analysis that would
point to noneugenical, biomedical applications.
His demographic analysis exposed and
documented the toll racism was exacting on the
Afro-American population. He also illustrated
the high cost of these conditions to the broader
society. Therefore, racism, segregation, and
poverty were problems the nation had to confront
to ensure its own health and survival (Cobb
1939a). He determined that the racial integration
of hospital patients and their “Negro Medical

Men” would go far to remedy national health
problems. Critical to this integration the
concomitant desegregation of medical education.
Indeed, the integration of the society as a whole
would be required to improve the health status of
Afro-Americans (Cobb 1947) .Integration policy
thereby becomes a program of applied physical
anthropology.
He identified racial discrimination in four
principal areas of health care: professional
education, professional societies, hospital
facilities, and prepayment medical plans (Cobb
1953). The main focus would be to obtain
access to adequate medical facilities for Afro-
Americans. To this end he developed an
effective multifaceted strategy for the
elimination of the health effects of racial
segregation and discrimination (Cobb
1951b,1953).
His masterminding effort and
implementation of the Imhotep National
Conferences on Hospital Integration was a major
achievement. The Imhotep Conferences were
sponsored jointly by the National Medical
Association’s Council on Medical Education and
Hospitals, the NAACP’s National Health
Committee, and the Medico-Chirurgical Society
of the District of Columbia. Established in 1957,
the conference met annually for seven years
(1957-1963), until one of its major goals was
met with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights
Act.
“Imhotep,” the Egyptian Demigod of
Medicine,
was chosen for the conference for two reasons. First, as
a reminder that a dark skin was associated with
distinction in medicine before that of any other color,
this served to emphasize the dignity of the approach to
the problem. Second, because the name meant, “He
who comes in peace,” that sponsoring organization
came in peace in a time of emotional tension. [Cobb
1962:113]
The Imhotep conferences served to compile
and disseminate otherwise scant information on
Afro-American health through their surveys,
conferences, and publications. These
conferences were also a forum for long-range
planning and lobbying at the national and local
levels (Cobb 1957b, 1962, 1963, 1964a, 1964b,
1964c). Lyndon B. Johnson attended one
meeting, the first American president to do so.
Although national health insurance was one of
the conference goals, Cobb would be invited to
the presidential signing of the legislation
introducing Medicare (the 1965 Medicare Bill)
that their efforts had helped to bring about ( also
see Cobb’s Senate testimony in support of H.R.
6675 in Morais 1978:269-271).
The Public Intellectual: Getting the Word Out
Central to his remarkable effectiveness was
Cobb’s keen knowledge of and energetic activity
within both the Afro-American and Euro-
American worlds of the time. One could say that
he understood the kind of “dualism” explicated
by Leon Damas and DuBois, so characteristic of
the African, Caribbean, and Afro-American
intelligentsia. Therefore, he approached the fight
for desegregation from a dual perspective; he
disseminated information and generated action,
in both arenas, from a growing position of
strength.
Within the Afro-American world, he used
the existing institutions, organizations,
publications, and personal networks to launch his
campaigns. As mentioned, he took on
responsibilities of leadership in directing the
national agenda for the desegregation of
hospitals and educational institutions from
within the medical and civil rights organizations.
He created the Bulletin of the Medico-
Chirurgical Society of the District of Columbia;
edited and upgraded the Journal of the National
Medical Association, where he published
prolifically; and published manuscripts through
his own means (including his father’s printing
shop in the early years) when appropriate organs
for his views were unavailable to him.
Not only did Cobb publish information on
health and race in “Negro” journals and
magazines (Journal of Negro Education, Negro
History Bulletin, Crisis, etc.) but also in popular
Afro-American magazines and newspapers. The
latter included Copper Romance, Negro Digest,
The Pittsburgh Courier, and Ebony Magazine.
He was involved in a close network of
leading Afro-Americans from diverse fields,
including William Hastie (judge), Charles Drew
(medical scientist), Ralph Bunche (United
Nations representative) , Carter Woodson
(historian), Constance Baker Motley (judge) , W.
E. B. DuBois (sociologist), Ernest Just
(biologist) , Percy Julian (chemist), and others
(like Arthur P. Davis [1987:26] , with whom he
“has had a decades-long battle ... over who is
more handsome”).
Montague Cobb became a respected active
member in professional and scientific
associations of the Euro-American world and he
ascended to leadership in many of them (see

Table 1). In addition to positions mentioned
previously, he served as vice president of the
American Association for the Advancement of
Science and spent 11 vigilant years on the board
of directors of the American Eugenics Society.
His publications in Euro-American-
controlled journals are diverse and numerous,
including the American Journal of Physical
Anthropology, Scientific Monthly, Journal of
Gerontology, American Journal of Anatomy, and
many others. Topically, his articles range from
skeletal aging techniques (Cobb 1952) and
comparative functional morphology (Cobb 1940,
1943a) to general articles on “Negroes” for the
Encyclopedia Britannica (Cobb 1961), and from
philosophy of the nature of humankind (Cobb
1978, 1980, 1981a) to biography and medical
education (Cobb 1939b and 1981b).
The Laboratory of Anatomy and Physical
Anthropology at Howard: A Material Legacy
Between 1932 and 1936 Montague Cobb
established the Laboratory of Anatomy and
Physical Anthropology at the Howard University
Medical School. The facility was physically
impressive and well equipped (Cobb 1936a) , but
little support was forthcoming for additional
personnel to help with teaching and research in
physical anthropology. He, nonetheless, pushed
forward with an advanced anthropology course
and integrated anthropological concepts into
other areas of teaching. He also began to
systematically collect and prepare the skeletons
of cadavers from the anatomy dissecting room,
along with detailed anatomical, demographic,
and medical records. This far-sighted and
painstaking effort (1932-1969) resulted in a
human biology research collection of anatomical
records on 987 individuals and the preservation
of more than 700 documented skeletons. Cobb’s
laboratory was the first to prepare an Afro-
American institution to enter authoritatively into
the lively and highly politicized discussion of
differences in “racial” biology, as well as basic
biological and medical research on the skeleton.
Pearl states in his review of Cobb’s 1936
monograph on The Laboratory of Anatomy and
Physical Anthropology of Howard University
(Cobb 1936a):
This account is withal so straightforward, so modest, so
unselfish, and so intelligent as to win instant sympathy
and admiration for its author’s clear-headedness and
philosophical soundness.... It recognizes that the Negro
group m America presents unparalleled opportunities,
taking into account all the circumstances historical and
present, for the investigation of some of the most
fundamental problems of human biology-problems of
variation, development, and growth with different
degrees of hybridization and under definable
environmental conditions. It also recognizes that these
opportunities have not hitherto been adequately taken ,
advantage of, and that for Howard University it should
be not merely a privilege, but a duty to do so.... Dr.
Cobb’s research program is sensible, modest, and
scientifically sound. It should be encouraged and
supported both from within and without the institution
in which he labors. [1936:447-448]
A recent assessment of the W. Montague
Cobb Human Skeletal Collection (Blakey 1988)
has shown it to be comparable to the Terry and
Hamann-Todd collections (the world’s most
frequently studied human skeletal collections) in
the quality of data that can be derived from it.
The Cobb Collection is also unique as a sample
of the eastern urban population of the United
States. The collection provides an irreplaceable
biological record of the development and
pathology of the poorest Washingtonians, from
the years of the Great Depression until 1969. In
1992 a working physical anthropology
laboratory housing the Cobb Collection was
established in the College of Arts and Sciences at
Howard University with the assistance of the
National Science Foundation.
The Elder Philosopher
In 1969 Montague Cobb took leave from
Howard University for a one-year visiting
professorship at Stanford University. His
departure occurred in the wake of a student
protest that targeted Cobb as a symbol of a
university establishment (some considered him
to be the most prominent scholar in the medical
school) that students considered to be
inadequate, paternalistic, archaic, and politically
compromised from the perspective of the Black
Power movement. Within this context, Cobb
came under fire by an organization of first-year
medical students who had little regard for the
humanistic aspects of his curriculum, preferring
a more strictly clinical education focusing on the
requirements of the national board examinations.
These students boycotted Cobb’s classes, forcing
him from the chairmanship of the Department of
Anatomy, a post he had held since 1947.
Meanwhile, 58 faculty members of the medical
school petitioned for Cobb’s reinstatement. By
the end of that year he was appointed Howard
University’s first distinguished professor by a
new university president. He achieved emeritus
status in 1973.

On November 10 of that year, the two
former students (then members of the faculty) to
whom he felt closest (LaSalle D. Leffall, Jr., and
Charles H. Epps) organized a testimonial dinner
in his honor. Five hundred people attended the
testimonial, including many of those who had
joined the boycott of 1969. According to Epps,
When many in that class became seniors they realized
how unfair they had been to Cobb; ... By then they had
a chance to become familiar with and reflect on what
the man had accomplished under very difficult
circumstances and at great financial sacrifice. ...So it
was gratifying to see that some in that class realized
that they had mistreated him and made efforts to make
amends. [Scarupa 1988:13-17]
Despite a nagging sense of disappointment for
several years following what he called, “the mess
in ‘69,” Montague Cobb remained undaunted.
He had for some time taken to he an the saying,
“Illegimati[s] non carborundum.”
2
During the last two decades of his life,
Cobb’s work took on a more philosophical bent.
Among his philosophical works, those framing
the concepts of “Homo sanguinis” and “man the
slow learner” stand out. An article entitled
“Human Variation: Informing the Public”
(1988), first presented as a paper at the 1987
meetings of the American Anthropological
Association in Chicago, reviews these theses and
applies them to current events. This would be
his last presentation of a professional paper.
Here one finds Cobb’s own perspective of his
philosophical theses articulated during the two
previous decades (Cobb 1974, 1978, 1980,
1981a).
[The] problem of hate resulted from Man’s dual nature
as Homo sanguinis or Man, the Bloody, vs. Homo
sapiens or Man, the Wise. Man has been a bloody
predatory primate always given to the overkill for over
a million years, but only during the last 3,000 years or
so has he developed anything like ethical systems. At
the present time it would seem that Homo sanguinis has
the upper hand. Can sapiens win? One hopeful sign is
that the concept of human rights seems to have taken
hold internationally. [Cobb 1988:674]
The turning-point for this “new high in
cultural evolution “ came in 1948 when the
United Nations adopted its Declaration of
Human Rights, which exceeded “the more
limited concept of civil rights.” He asserted,
furthermore, that the implementation of civil
rights laws in the United States has made the
2
This popular term is not formal Latin. We show Cobb’s
usage with a grammatical correction not present in the
colloquialism.
“entrenched racial hatred of the American
population” more apparent, making it ever
clearer where additional efforts need be directed.
But for Cobb, the struggle against racism was
not limited to national boundaries:
Before my first \isit to South Mrica in 1977, I told my
friends that I did not need to learn anything about
apartheid, because all of my early life had been lived
under apartheid in the capital city of the great nation
declaimed as the Land of the Free and Home of the
Brave. [1988:674]
His high regard for the courage of blacks
and whites rallying against apartheid in South
Africa was often expressed in our discussions
with him. There seemed to be no one whom
Montague Cobb respected more than his friend
Phillip Tobias. A physical anthropologist,
Tobias was dean of the Medical School at the
University of the Witwatersrand, whose faculty
denounced the “whitewash” that the S.A.
Medical and Dental Councils had made of
Steven Biko’s murder in detention (Cobb
1988:672). As human actors struggle against
racism for human rights, Homo sapiens contends
with Homo sanguinis.
Furthermore, in “Human Variation:
Informing the Public,” Cobb uses biological
metaphors for the problems and prospects of
accelerated social change at the end of the 20th
century. In summary, he argues that the more
rapid the rate of development, the more precision
is required to coordinate interrelated structures
and processes in a developing organism (or other
system). Small errors during the accelerated
early stages of an individual’s development (as
with the aging process toward a life’s end) often
lead to exaggerated, irreversible, and disastrous
effects. “Just as an embryological defect cannot
be corrected, so our mammoth construction
programs can be wrong, which is not obvious
until it is too late.” Flexibility is allowed during
the more stable middle years of life, during
which time “tremendous variability among
individuals” occurs without the same risk of
structural damage.
Let us hope that Homo sapiens will prevail over Homo
sanguinis, and that we may use reason more in the
solution of our problems. Otherwise, we may eliminate
our species, along with many others, and ruin our planet
in the process. [ 1988:675 ]
In contemplating the potential future of humankind, it is
necessary to recognize that the genus Homo is a slow
learner. The paleolithic paintings, drawings, and
sculpture in over 100 caves in Europe and others in
southern Africa and Australia show that our Old Stone

Age ancestors were good artists and that their principal
subject was anatomy.... Why did it take 35,000 years,
unti1 1543, when Vesalius published Fabrica, for an
accurate atlas of human anatomy to appear? Many
complexities are involved that we cannot go into here.
[Often cited prominently among these complexities is
the obstructive role of dogma.] Nonetheless, the strife
that besets our planet today indicates that Homo is still
a slow learner. [Cobb 1988:674]
Physical Anthropology Today
We were very interested in Cobb’s overview
of changes that have taken place in his field, and
in his recommendations for future
anthropologists.
The contrast of what you call a close knit group of
physical anthropologists when I got into it, to the multi-
ring circus you have today at meetings is enormous.
It’s over specialized. Not that that is damaging. But it
is the loss of the integrative habit... I think they ought to
be more grounded in the medical field, pathology,
anatomy, gross and microscopic. You can move then to
any field. And you don’t have to move into sociology
to do it [CPRHBI 1985:23-24, 26]
But the changes that I have witnessed have been more
in the direction of ultra-specialization. I do not think
there is anyone I know in anthropology who was as
broadly trained as the people I grew up with in the
Association (AAPA).... The young folk today don’t
know the other fellow’s field, which is unusual.
[CPRHBII 1985:23]
The emphasis should always be on getting a generalized
beginning.... Unless you have your eye on everything
from super-galaxies to quarks you don’t know where to
fit things.... So my theme is to be “in tune to the
universe.” [CPRHBII 1985:23]
In many respects William Montague Cobb
exemplifies the physical anthropologist of his
day – anatomist, physician, and physical
anthropologist – grounded in anatomy and
profoundly interested in human variation. Yet,
he clearly did “march to the beat of a different
drummer” in several ways. His research and
publication agendas in physical anthropology
were carefully planned. While we can find no
reason to doubt the sincerity of his interest in
everything he did, he seemed to be aware that
some of his research was strategically important
for giving him “credibility” as a physical
anthropologist in keeping with the field’s most
conservative standards. Such “simple anatomy”
publications were devoid of social and racial
issues. Yet, even for this sizable body of work,
his study of cranial suture closure and human
aging is the only one of his 1,100 publications
we have seen cited in the physical
anthropological literature.
His works on Afro-Americans and on race
do not appear to have been responded to or
utilized by the otherwise Euro-American field of
physical anthropology. He took on the physical
anthropology of the “Negro” because, as a
physical anthropologist, he wanted to challenge
the discipline’s erroneous principles and change
the basic approaches and assumptions of
anthropology. These changes were
fundamentally concerned with refocusing the
field from racial description and causation (with
its attendant racism) to human variation,
adaptation, and evolution, where all humans
were treated “with equal dignity.” These were
not necessarily new ideas; clearly his association
with T. Wingate Todd played a significant role in
shaping his view of physical anthropology.
Cobb’s views were not all equally liberal or
forward-thinking. But he was, in the Afro-
American parlance of his time, always a “Race
Man,” conscious that his own people held him
accountable and taking meaning from that
service. Cobb used his membership on
professional committees to realize his agenda
whenever possible.
When it came to applying anthropology,
Cobb was not limited by the traditional
parameters of professional concern. He chose
activism, an applied anthropology directed
against the effects of social inequality and
discrimination. There simply was no biological
evidence for black inferiority, an apparent fact
that Cobb sought to communicate in the most
compelling of scientific terms, although journals
in human biology seem, paradoxically enough,
not to have been the place where Cobb could
make that point clearly. It was in the Afro-
American organs – especially the Journal of the
National Medical Association, which he edited –
that Cobb could address the integration of
biology and medicine with history and social
policy.
Cobb saw education, also, as a means of
effecting social change. He was a consummate
educator whose emphases on illustration and
playfulness stand out as distinctive pedagogical
methods. Through educating scholars (his
colleagues), students, government officials, and
the general public, he could correct biological
misinformation and thereby help eliminate the
scientific seeds of racism, hoping to wear away
the foundations of social inequality. These were
(and are) big, institutionalized problems
requiring solutions in public policy. Civil rights
organizations and legislative efforts promised
solutions of comparable scale. It was in areas

related to health that the Civil Rights movement
most benefited from his credentials.
By making a commitment to Howard
University Medical School, Cobb was unable to
pass on a legacy through students of
anthropology as he would have had he taught in
a department of anthropology or even a medical
institution with an affiliated anthropology
program (as many of his colleagues did). For the
bulk of his career, black faculty were barred
from white institutions in which American
anthropologists were employed, and there has
never been a graduate program or department of
anthropology in an Afro-American college or
university. Instead he achieved distinction in
civil rights activism and produced several
generations of primarily Afro-American
physicians and dentists, many of whom have
made significant contributions to their fields. We
do not think, however, that these factors
adequately explain the dearth of citation and
professional attention given his writings beyond
the borders of the “black world” in which he was
renown.
William Montague Cobb did leave an
important legacy to anthropology; clearly his
diverse and unparalleled number of publications
and his extensive documented skeletal collection
are primary contributions. But most importantly
his legacy is one of admonishment and a call for
social responsibility and scholar activism: an
admonishment to understand the historical roots
of the discipline, to rectify the misinformation of
the past, and to be careful with the information
we put forth today; an admonishment that racism
and racist interpretation are often subtle,
insidious, and potentially anywhere in our work.
Cobb’s history is that of one who believed that
anthropologists must take responsibility not only
for their own thoughts and actions but for thecir
own society – and that these thoughts and actions
make a difference. The key, he often said, is to
“do what one enjoys.” To enjoy the
responsibilities of a life of struggle represents
one of the most fundamental Afro-American
values.
Epilogue
We consider ourselves extremely fortunate
to have had the opportunity of knowing Dr.
William Montague Cobb. This article began as a
short meetings paper. We thought it would be
appropriate to interview Dr. Cobb, since we all
lived in the District of Columbia at the time. It
became a significant learning experience and a
turning point in our professional lives as physical
anthropologists. We forged an enduring
friendship and mentor relationship with Dr.
Cobb that we consider a precious gift.
This article represents only selected
highlights of Dr. Cobb’s accomplishments and
contributions. Yet, in reviewing an early version
of this manuscript [with the inclusion of his
editorial comments], Dr. Cobb was pleased.
Dr. William Montague Cobb passed away
on November 20, 1990. His death has left a void
in our lives but his lessons, admonitions, and
inspiration remain with us.
Notes
Acknowledgments. We would like to thank Kim
Boyd (Howard University) and Glenis McKie
(University of the District of Columbia) for
dedicated, efficient research and abstraction;
Heather York (University of Oklahoma) for
physical anthropological biographic research;
and Amelia Marie Adams for bibliographic
research. In particular, we would like to thank
Ellen Tolliver for the professional transcription
of interview tapes. We are grateful to the late
Dr. W. Montague Cobb for his patience, time for
interviews, reprints, and personal photographs
and to Carolyn Cobb Wilkinson and Amelia
Cobb Gray, his daughters, for their
encouragement.
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W. Montague Cobb (1904-1990). Photo by Jeffrey John Fearing.

Table 1
Selected professional affiliations in anthropology, science, medicine, and civil rights.
Association/Committee Position Years
American Association of Physical Anthropologists President 1957-1959
Vice-President 1948-1950, 1954-1956
Associate Editor 1944-1948
Anthropological Society of Washington President 1949-1951
Vice-President 1941-1947
Board of Managers 1944-1948
American Association for the Advancement of Science Vice-President 1955-1956
Section H – Anthropology Chairman 1955-1956
American Eugenics Society Board of Directors 1957-1968
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People President 1976-1982
National Medical Committee Chairman 1950-1952
National Health Committee Chairman 1953-1977
Imhotep National Conference on Hospital Integration Executive Director 1957-1963
Organizer 1957
Medico-Chirurgical Society of the District of Columbia President 1945-1947, 1954-1956
Bulletin Founder/Editor 1941-1986
National Medical Association President 1964-1965
Editor 1949-1977
Emeritus Editor 1978-1990
Council of Medical Education and Hospitals Chairman 1948-1952, 1953-1963