Richard A. Long, Professor, Scholar, Writer, and connoisseur of African American Arts and culture, was born in Philadelphia in 1927. He began his education at the Arnold School, after which he attended high school in South Carolina. Long went on to attend Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oxford University and the Universities of Paris and Poitiers.

Dr. Long began his academic career West Virginia State College in 1949/50. Later he became an English and Speech instructor at Morgan State University in 1952 and a professor of English and French at Hampton institute in 1966.

In 1957/58, Richard Long was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Universities of Paris and Poitiers. In 1966 he received his doctorat in Linguistics from the University of Poiteirs. In 1968 Dr. Long became a professor of English and Afro-American Studies at Atlanta University where he founded the CAAS (Center for African and African-American Studies). In 1987 Richard Long became Atticus Haygood Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Emory University where he has served as an adjunct professor in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts since 1973.

Active for many years on the boards of Phylon: The Atlanta University Review of Race and Culture, The Langston Hughes Review, and the Zora Neale Hurston Bulletin. Dr. Long is a former president of the College Language Association, and founder of the Triennial Symposium of African Art (1968+); The Annual Conference of the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAS) at Atlanta University from 1968 to 1978; and the New World Festivals of the African Diaspora (1978-1988).

Publications include classic books in literature, art, dance, and history: Negritude, Essays and Studies (with Albert H. Bernian, 1967); Afro American Writing: Prose and Poetry, (with Eugenia Collier, 1972 and 1985); Beauford Delany: A Retrospective (1978); The Black Tradition in American Dance (1989); African Americans: A Portrait (1993); and Black Writers & The American Civil War (1988).

Additional biographical information on Dr. Richard A. Long may be found in Notable Black American Men, Detroit: Gale, 1999.