Gerald D. Jaynes

Gerald D. Jaynes is the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of Economics, African American Studies, and Urban Studies at Yale University. In addition to his teaching and research duties at Yale, he has served as a legislative aide to State Senator Cecil A. Partee, President Pro Tempore of the Illinois State Senate (1971–72); Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania; and Chair of Yale’s Department of African and African American Studies (1990–96).

He has served in many public capacities, such as Study Director of the Committee on the Status of Black Americans at the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC (1985–89); Chairman of the New Haven, CT, Minority Business Development Agency by mayoral appointment (1982–84); the Mayor’s Blue-Ribbon Committee for the Redevelopment of New Haven (1990); Member of the Board of Economists, Black Enterprise magazine; Fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies; and Member of the Council of Economic Advisors to the National Urban League. He has testified before the U.S. Congress on numerous occasions and served as a consultant to federal and local government agencies. He is recognized as an expert on race relations and the economic conditions of African Americans, and has lectured and spoken on these topics at many universities and forums around the world. His research has been cited internationally within forums such as legislative bodies and courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Professor Jaynes has appeared on radio and television shows, including NBC’s Today Show and The Bill Moyers Show. Listed in Who’s Who Among African Americans since 1989, he has written extensively for scholarly journals, books, and popular essays. Among his more notable publications are: A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society (1989); Branches without Roots: Genesis of the Black Working Class in the American South, 1862–1882 (1986); Immigration and Race: New Challenges for American Democracy (2000); and The Encyclopedia of African American Society (2004). He earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1976.