James Turner

James E. Turner (1940 – August 6, 2022) was an American Africana studies scholar. He was the founding director of the Cornell Africana Studies and Research Center.

Biography Turner was born in 1940 in Brooklyn, in a family of eight children. His father was working class, and Turner attended the High School of Fashion Industries. He grew up in Manhattan. Before he entered college, he worked in the garment industry and as a social worker. From 1963 to 1966 he attended Central Michigan University, earning a sociology degree and also studying political economy. At Cornell, Turner wrote papers about his view of how Black Studies should be approached, a concept he termed "Africana", which the Encyclopedia of African-American Politics defined as "an interdisciplinary Pan African approach to blackness focusing on the US, the Caribbean and Africa." He also studied Black nationalism and politics in the US and Africa.