Gerald Jaynes

Gerald D. Jaynes is professor in the department of Economics and the department of African American Studies at Yale University.  He earned the doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, 1976. In addition to his teaching and research duties as a professor at Yale, he has served as a legislative aid to State Senator Cecil A. Partee, President Pro-tem of the Illinois State Senate, 1971-72; assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, and chaired Yale’s Department of African and African American Studies, 1990-1996. He has served in many public capacities such as Study Director of the Committee On The Status of Black Americans at the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C., 1985-89; Chairman of the New Haven, CT. Minority Business Development Agency by Mayoral appointment, 1982-84; the Mayor’s Blue-Ribbon Committee For the Redevelopment of New Haven, 1990; Member, Board of Economists, Black Enterprise Magazine, Fellow, Joint Center For Political and Economic Studies; Member Council of Economic Advisors to the National Urban League. He has testified before the United States Congress on numerous occasions and served as a consultant to federal and local government agencies. He is recognized as an expert on race relations and the economic conditions of African Americans, and has lectured and spoken on these topics at many universities and forums around the world.  His research has been cited internationally within forums such as legislative bodies and courts including the United States Supreme Court. He has appeared on radio and television shows, including The NBC Today Show and The Bill Moyers’ Show. Listed in Who’s Who Among African Americans since 1989, he has written extensively for scholarly journals, books and popular essays.  Among his more notable publications are: A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society, 1989; Branches Without Roots: Genesis of the Black Working Class in the American South, 1986; Immigration and Race: New Challenges for American Democracy, 2000; The Encyclopedia of African American Society, 2004.