Charles Edgar Dickinson Jr. (1908 – 1964) was an American landscape architect and educator. He was the first Black member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA).

Early life and education

Charles Edgar Dickinson Jr. was born on August 12, 1908, in

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...

. He attended public school in Columbus. Dickinson attended

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

, where he received a bachelor of landscape architecture degree (1930), a master's of science degree (1945), and a doctor of philosophy. He was married to Edith Waterman (or Edythe Watermann), and they did not have children.

Career

He worked as a landscape architect and professor at

Palmer Memorial Institute The Alice Freeman Palmer Memorial Institute, better known as Palmer Memorial Institute, was a school for upper class African Americans. It was founded in 1902 by Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown at Sedalia, North Carolina near Greensboro. Palmer Memo ...

in Sedalia, North Carolina. This was followed by work teaching at

Tuskegee Institute Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature. The campus was de ...

(now Tuskegee University) from 1931 to 1932; and teaching at South Carolina State University from 1934 to 1940. Dickinson's longest teaching and landscaping tenure was at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, from December 1940 until November 1964. He collaborated with architect

Louis Edwin Fry Sr. Louis Edwin Fry Sr., , (1903–2000) was an American architect and professor. He was a former chair of the department of architecture at Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, D.C.. Fry was a registered architect in ...

on the landscape architecture for the Page Library at Lincoln University. He died of a heart attack on November 17, 1964, in Missouri. Dickinson's profile was included in the biographical dictionary '' African American Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 1865–1945'' (2004).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dickinson, Charles Edgar 1908 births 1964 deaths 20th-century African-American educators 20th-century American educators African-American educators American landscape architects Lincoln University (Missouri) faculty Ohio State University alumni People from Columbus, Ohio People from Jefferson City, Missouri South Carolina State University alumni Tuskegee Institute alumni