Robert O’Meally

Robert O'Meally grew up in Washington, D.C., son of George O’Meally, a cartographer, and Ethel Browne O'Meally, a noted educator in the district's public school system. O’Meally also grew up with his grandmother, whose parent’s had been enslaved in Washington, D.C. A noted baseball player, O’Meally attended segregated schools before being one of the first African American families to move to the Manor Park/Takoma section of Northwest D.C., where he attended an integrated junior high school. After graduating from Coolidge High School, he received his B.A. from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University and taught at Howard University from 1975 to 1978, Wesleyan University from 1978 to 1989, and joined the faculty of Barnard College in 1989 as the Adolph S. and Effie Ochs Professorship of Literature. He has taught at Columbia University since 1993, when he was appointed to the Zora Neale Hurston Professorship. O’Meally founded Columbia's Center for Jazz Studies in 1999 and led the center until 2007. O'Meally has written extensively about jazz artists, including Billie Holiday, and has also written about African American culture, most notably on the life and works of Ralph Ellison and Sterling Brown. O'Meally received a Guggenheim “Genius Grant” Fellowship in 1989. He was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album in 1999 for the Smithsonian-sponsored The Jazz Singers.