Mark Hanna Watkins

He obtained a Bachelor of Science from Prairie View State College in 1926, remaining there for a further two years as assistant registrar.

[1] In 1929, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he became a pupil of Edward Sapir and wrote a Master's thesis entitled Terms of Relationship in Aboriginal Mexico (1930), dealing with seven genetically unrelated language groups: Otomian, Tarascan, Aztecan, Mixtecan, Zapotecan, Mixean, and Mayan.

In 1943, the first African Studies program in the United States was founded at Fisk, and Watkins was one of its six faculty members.

From 1947 to his retirement in 1972, Watkins was professor of anthropology at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he worked particularly on African languages and on promoting exchange programs between students in Africa and America.

[1] Shortly before his death, he dictated to his wife the final revision of "Setswana Phonemics: Sefokeng Dialect", which appeared posthumously in 1978.