John Langston Gwaltney was an African-American writer and anthropologist focused on African American culture

African American culture

African-American culture, also known as black culture, in the United States refers to the cultural contributions of Americans of African descent to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from American culture. The distinct identity of African-American culture is rooted in...

, best known for his book Drylongso: A Self Portrait of Black America.

Academic background

Gwaltney earned a BA from Upsala College

Upsala College

Upsala College was a private college in East Orange, New Jersey, USA, founded in 1893. Construction of the campus started in 1900. The college closed in 1995, after several years of financial problems.-History:...

 in 1952, an 1957 MA from the New School for Social Research in 1957, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in 1967. He was a professor of anthropology at the University of Syracuse in New York.

Drylongso

Drylongso is a collection of Gwaltney's transcriptions of oral interviews with who he described as "core black people", ordinary men and women who made up black America. In the interviews, he asked people to define their culture. The book includes a glossary of African American terms, and interviews with 42 people from the Northeast United States. The title is from an African-American word, "drylongso", which is used to mean "ordinary", in reference to the social status of the interviewees. In a terse introductory statement chosen by Gwaltney from an interviewee not included in the broader text, factory worker Othman Sullivan says "I think this anthropology is just another way to call me a nigger." The New York Times described it as "The most expansive and realistic exposition of contemporary mainstream black attitudes yet published."