S. Allen Counter

Samuel Allen Counter Jr. (July 8, 1944 – July 12, 2017) was a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and inaugural director of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations.

Early life Samuel Allen Counter Jr. was born in Americus, Georgia. His mother, Anne (née Johnson), was a nurse and his father managed businesses, but died prematurely of a heart attack. Counter grew up in south Florida in the segregated town of Boynton Beach and attended his first civil rights protest as the youngest participant at a "swim-in" at a white-only beach.

Counter studied biology and sensory physiology as an undergraduate at Tennessee State University, He later earned a PhD from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. first serving as a postdoctoral fellow and assistant neurophysiologist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1970, the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare named Counter to National Institute of Mental Health's National Advisory Mental Health Council. He remained director until his death in 2017. In 1986, Counter was approached by an Inuk who claimed, without adducing any evidence, to be the child of Matthew A. Henson who subsequently introduced Counter to another Inuk who claimed, again without evidence, to be the child of Robert E. Peary. Counter was elected to The Explorers Club in 1989.

Counter designed Arthur Ashe's memorial at Woodland Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, dedicated on what would have been Ashe's 50th birthday on July 10, 1993.

Awards and honors In 2012, Counter was knighted by Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden.

Works I Sought My Brother: An Afro-American Reunion with David L. Evans (MIT Press, 1981; accompaniment to 1978 PBS special by Evans and Allen) North Pole Legacy: Black, White and Eskimo (University of Massachusetts Press, 1991) North Pole Promise: Black, White, and Inuit Friends (Bauhan Publishing, Peterborough, NH, 2017 $19.95 (144p) )