Roy Bryce-Laporte

Roy Simon Bryce-Laporte (born Roy Laporte; September 7, 1933 in Panama City – July 30, 2012 in Sykesville, Maryland) was a sociologist who established one of the first African-American studies departments.^[1]

Roy Simon Laporte was born and raised in the Republic of Panama, in a family of mixed West Indian and African ancestry.^[2]

Bryce-Laporte attended the University of Panama, earning an associate degree, before earning bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and studying at the University of Puerto Rico.^[1] He completed a Ph.D. in sociology at UCLA.^[1]

He taught at Hunter College at CUNY and then at Yale, before becoming the founding director of Yale's department of African-American studies, established in 1969.^[1][3] The Yale department's approach to African-American studies, and Bryce-Laporte's as well, centered not just on African-American history in the United States but on African experience in the entire Western hemisphere (the hemispheric studies approach) and what has come to be called the African diaspora.^[1] Bryce-Laporte's research centered on the experiences of Black immigrants in the United States.^[4]

After Yale, Bryce-Laporte taught at a variety of institutions including College of Staten Island at CUNY, Syracuse University, Catholic University of America, Howard University, University of Pennsylvania, and Colorado College.^[2] He was the founding director of Smithsonian Institution's Research Institute on Immigration and Ethnic Studies.^[1] In 1989 Bryce-Laporte joined the faculty at Colgate University as John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and director of its Africana and Latin American studies program.^[4]

He was married to Dorotea Lowe Bryce and companions with Marian D. Holness, and parented three children.^[1]

• 1986, curator, "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor...?", first shown at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library^[1] (exhibition on black voluntary immigration to the United States, in observance of the centennial of the Statue of Liberty^[5]
• Bryce-Laporte, "Black Immigrants: The Experience of Invisibility and Inequality", Journal of Black Studies, v.3, pp. 20–56 (1972)
• Testimony on Immigration before the US House Select Committee on Population (1978)
• Testimony on the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1982, before the US House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, Subcommittee on Census and Population (1983)

• Danforth Fellowship^[2]
• "Man of the Year", Panamanian Council of New York City^[2]
• Afro-Latino Institute award^[2]
• Distinguished Service Award, Yale Alumni Association^[2]

• Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "The Two Nations of Black America" (PBS)
• "Diaspora and Diversity Within the Black Experience" (Colgate, 2000) - Conference held in honor of Bryce-Laporte's retirement