John Gibbs St. Clair Drake, known simply as St. Clair Drake, was an American urban sociologist and anthropologist whose scholarship and activism focused on the racism and racial tensions of the mid-twentieth century. Born in Virginia in 1911, he first studied biology at Hampton Institute, then completed a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago. Drake then became one of the first Black faculty members at Roosevelt University. After working there for 23 years, he left to found the African and African American Studies program at Stanford University. -thoughtco