Since the early 1960's August Meier has been a major force in the study of African-American history in his examination of late nineteenth and twentieth century America by his application of rigorous social and intellectual analysis. Meier was actively involved in the civil rights movement and studied its origins and development. He taught at three historic black colleges followed by twenty years at Kent State University. As editor of two major series on blacks in America, he influenced scholars and students alike.

Born in 1923 in Newark, New Jersey, Meier was reared in upwardly mobile, middle class surroundings. He openly acknowledges his parents' influence on his intellectual development--his East European Jewish mother was a teacher and vice principal of a public school, his father was a chemist. His parents had met in the Socialist Party--his mother, of German extraction, came from a family of radical intellectuals. By the mid-1930's his parents were liberal in their thinking and made him aware of the plight of the poor and the oppressed.

Another significant factor was Meier's experience as a camper and counselor at Pioneer Youth Camp near Kingston, New York where he spent his summers between 1934 and 1939. Pioneer Youth of America had been founded in 1924 by a group of reformers including progressive educators, anarchists, Communists, socialists, union leaders and liberals. A racially integrated camp, the children decided democratically what their activities would be. Pioneer Youth served as a catalyst for Meier's interest in social issues, his growing commitment to racial equality, his persistent anti-Stalisism, and the shaping of his activity in the black student protest movement of the 1960's.

Between 1940-1945 Meier attended Oberlin College, which had a reputation for being "liberal." One year during this time was spent working at a War Department agency in Newark, one-third of the employees were the black. Experiences at this agency gave impetus to Meier's decision to teach at a black college and he began studying race relations and black history. Moreover, his last two years at Oberlin were engaged in activist concerns and in anti-discrimination practices.

Meier was an assistant professor of history at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, 1945-1949, utilizing the last year of his experience there pursuing his Master's degree at Columbia University. His thesis was a study of black American nationalism prior to Marcus Garvey. Between 1953 and 1956 he held the same title at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee where he also served as President Charles S. Johnson's research assistant. Meier was awarded the Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1957 with his tome, "Negro Racial Thought in the Age of Booker T. Washington, ca. 1880-1915" serving as his dissertation. In 1963 his revised published dissertation placed Meier on the cutting edge of intellectual historians who used sociological and anthropological approaches in his examination of black history.

From 1957 to 1964 Meier taught at Morgan State College in Baltimore, first as assistant professor of history, then as associate professor. Unlike Fisk and Tougaloo where there were approximately equal numbers of black and white faculty, at Morgan 90% were black. Morgan State students had been active in civil rights work, and in 1960 Meier was also involved in the students' attempt to integrate a restaurant at Northwood shopping center by demonstrating their protest at being excluded. The students formed an organization called the Civic Interest Group and asked Meier to become and adult adviser. Later, as a result of participating in a restaurant sit-in, Meier was arrested. With the cooperation of the Congress of Racial Equality and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the students won the right to integrate these public services through the passage of laws. Meier developed a long-standing interest in the origins of non-violent direct action, researching early twentieth century manifestations of this form of protest.

As a liberal and integrationist teaching history at black institutions, Meier became involved in student activism, and in the early 1960's also became acquainted with officers of CORE, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the NAACP. He got to know such leaders as Bayard Rustin, Norman Hill, Stokeley Carmichael, Floyd McKissick, and Herbert Hill.

Meier taught history at Chicago's Roosevelt University from 1964 to 1967, a time when the era of integration had passed and black power had begun. The interest in black experience during this time period by both black and white researchers broadened the audience for Meier's publications. From 1967 until his retirement in 1993, Meier taught history at the only largely white university with which he was affiliated, Kent State University in Ohio. In 1969 he was appointed University Professor, the highest rank to which Kent State faculty members can be named. His long collaboration with his colleague, Elliott Rudwick, professor of sociology at Kent State, resulted in seven books and numerous articles. Their joint effort lasted until Rudwick's death in 1985.

Meier's activity in civil rights dates back to his college days at Oberlin in the 1940's when he joined in the campaign against discrimination of the white barbershops and witnessed the protest against the Jim Crow blood bank. Meier joined the local branch of the Newark, New Jersey NAACP in 1948, and served as secretary between 1950-1952, then again in 1957. Meier was a consultant for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission, 1968.

Since the 1950's Meier has been active in several national scholarly organizations including the Southern Historical Association, the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. From about 1959-1961 he participated in a campaign to prevail upon the SHA to end its practice of holding conventions at hotels that barred blacks, and in 1980 he served on its Program Committee, then became its president in 1992. For the AHA Meier was on the Program Committee in 1972, and he chaired the Organization of American Historians's Program Committee in 1990. In 1998 thenAHA honored Meier with its Award for Scholarly Distinction, which is bestowed upon senior historians. In presenting this honor, the AHA declared that "since the pioneering work of Carter G. Woodson and the establishment of the in 1915, no historian has influenced the study of African American history more broadly than August Meier."

In the 1970's Meier received a number of research grants, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and one from the Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences. He was also a recipient of a research grant from the National Endowment for the Huamanities; in addition in the 1980's he twice presented a summer seminar with NEH funds entitled "Black Protest Movement in Twentieth-Century America."

Meier has been a prolific writer analyzing black protest thought, civil rights and related issues. He has either authored or edited fourteen books between 1963 and 1986, published close to a hundred articles, and written book reviews which have appeared in the major history journals. He has lectured at colleges and universities across the country about timely race related issues and aspects of his research.

Perhaps Meier's most far-reaching impact on the intellectual community has been achieved through his role as editor of books and other publications for four series in black studies. He served as general editor of the Negro in American Life Series for Atheneum, 1966-1974. He has also been general editor of the University of Illinois Press Black in the New World Series, from 1972 to 1998. Meier along with Elliott Rudwick co-edited the Bobbs-Merrill Reprint Series in Black Studies, 1966-1974, in addition to serving as a co-editor (also with Rudwick) for the University Publications of America, Black Studies Research Sources: Microfilms of Materials in Major Archival Manuscript Collections, 1983-1998. In his capacity as editor of Atheneum and the University of Illinois Press, Meier's demanding criticism and generous aid to recent students publishing their first scholarly work as well as to experienced writers can be noted in the excellent quality of the series. His former student, John H. Bracey, became his co-editor for UPA and Bobbs-Merrill, and in 1991 became his co-editor for the University of Illinois Press series. Meier was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Rutgers University in 1994. He is now retired and living in New Jersey--he makes it a point to regularly attend and participate in historical association meetings.