Recognizing Pioneering Economist and Professor Dr. Bernard E. Anderson on the occasion of Black History Month

Recognizing Pioneering Economist and Professor Dr. Bernard E. Anderson on the occasion of Black History Month WHEREAS, Nationally renowned economist Dr. Bernard E. Anderson, Whitney M. Young, Jr. Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, was the second African American ever appointed to the Wharton faculty and the first to receive tenure; and WHEREAS, During his boyhood in Philadelphia’s 7th Ward, which W.E.B. Du Bois had painstakingly documented only decades earlier for his seminal sociological work The Philadelphia Negro , Dr. Anderson noticed the differences between Blacks and whites: how much or little money they had, how they spent it, and the quality of housing available to both groups; and WHEREAS, The unfairness he saw in his youth troubled Dr. Anderson so deeply that he decided to major in economics during his freshman year at Livingstone College, in order to explore racial disparities in economic life and related areas. He later completed graduate-level studies in economics at Michigan State University under some of the country’s leading institutional labor economists, including Dr. Andrew F. Brimmer, who served as his advisor and would later become his lifelong mentor; and WHEREAS, After earning his Ph.D at the University of Pennsylvania, becoming only the seventh Black person to do so, and joining the faculty at Wharton, Dr. Anderson began to look for real solutions, outside of academia, to the employment and economic development …