Martin Luther Kilson Jr. was born in East Rutherford, New Jersey on February 14, 1931. He received a bachelor's degree from Lincoln University and a master's degree and Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. He did field work in Sierra Leone under a Ford Foundation fellowship, studying the political system in that country as it shifted from British control to independence in 1961. When he returned to the United States, he became a research associate at Harvard's Center for International Affairs. He became a lecturer in government at Harvard in 1962, an assistant professor in 1964, and was the first African-American professor granted tenure in 1968. He served as the Frank G. Thomson professor of government at Harvard from 1988 to 1999, when he retired from teaching. He wrote several books including Political Change in a West African State and Transformation of the African-American Intelligentsia, 1880-2012. He died from congestive heart failure on April 24, 2019 at the age of 88.
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