Logan enlisted in the U.S. Army during World
War I. He served with the 372nd Infantry and
achieved the rank of lieutenant before his dis-
charge. His distaste for institutional racism in
America prompted him to live in France for four
years after the war ended. He collaborated with W.
E. B. DUBOIS on plans for the successful Pan-
African Congress meetings. Logan returned to the
United States in 1924. After teaching at Virginia
Union University and at ATLANTAUNIVERSITY,he
became the assistant to renowned historian
CARTERG. WOODSON. Logan worked with Wood-
son at the ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF
NEGROLIFE ANDHISTORY. He later was instru-
mental in the push to train African-American pi-
lots that culminated in the training programs that
produced the Tuskegee Airmen.
Logan married Ruth Robinson, a Richmond,
Virginia, native, talented soprano, and Howard
University graduate, in 1927. The couple met at
Virginia Union University, where she was working
as a choir director. She passed away in 1966.
Logan published the majority of his works
after the close of the Harlem Renaissance. This in-
cluded his dissertation and landmark study, The
Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti,
1776–1891(1941), The Negro and the Post-War
World(1945), and The Negro in American Life and
Thought: The Nadir 1877–1901(1954). His great-
est contribution to African-American history was
completed just before his death. The Dictionary of
American Negro Biography(1982), completed with
coeditor Michael Winston, is an impressive compi-
lation of biographies and rich social histories that
illuminate the African-American history of enter-
prise and excellence.
Logan, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, was
honored in 1980 when the NATIONALASSOCIA-
TION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED
PEOPLE conferred upon him the SPINGARN
MEDAL. An outspoken critic of segregation and
black nationalism, Logan dedicated his life to
achieving racial equality and civil rights for peo-
ple of color.
Bibliography
Janken, Kenneth Robert. Rayford W. Logan and the
Dilemma of the African-American Intellectual.Am-
herst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993.
Logan, Rayford. Howard University: The First Hundred
Years, 1867–1967.New York: New York University
Press, 1969.
———. The Attitude of the Southern White Press Toward
Negro Suffrage, 1932–1940.Washington, D.C.: The
Foundation Publishers, 1940.
———. The Betrayal of the Negro, from Rutherford B.
Hayes to Woodrow Wilson.New York: Collier Books,
1965.
Rayford Logan Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research
Center, Howard University; Manuscript Division,
Library of Congress.
Sterling, Phillip, and Rayford Logan, eds. Four Took Free-
dom: The Lives of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Dou-
glass, Robert Smalls, and Blanche K. Bruce.Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967.Loggins, Vernon(1893–1968)
A COLUMBIAUNIVERSITYprofessor who published
one of the first serious analyses of early African-
American literature.
Born in Hempstead, Texas, Loggins graduated
from the University of Texas in 1914. He pursued
graduate work at the UNIVERSITY OFCHICAGOand
at Columbia University. He earned his master’s de-
gree in 1917 and then joined the U.S. Army. He
was stationed in FRANCEduring World War I. Log-
gins completed his Ph.D. at Columbia in 1931.
Loggins published The Negro Author: His De-
velopment in America to 1900in 1931. One of his
best resources for the dissertation, which he then
published, was the Schomburg Collection. This
substantial set of African-American archival mate-
rials was housed in the 135th Street Branch of the
NEWYORKPUBLICLIBRARY.Bibliography
Loggins, Vernon. The Negro Author: His Development in
America to 1900.New York: Columbia University
Press, 1931.Lonesome Road: Six Plays for the
Negro TheatrePaul Green(1926)
A collection of plays by PAULGREEN, a white pro-
fessor at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill and prolific playwright known for his
works on African-American subjects.322 Loggins, Vernon