Huey Jefferson Battle (October 31, 1918 – January 23, 1991) was an American economist who was an economics professor and administrator at Langston University and

Virginia State University Virginia State University (VSU or Virginia State) is a public historically Black land-grant university in Ettrick, Virginia. Founded on , Virginia State developed as the United States's first fully state-supported four-year institution of high ...

. He was the first African-American in Oklahoma to earn a doctoral degree, and was posthumously inducted into the

Oklahoma State University Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New ...

Diversity Hall of Fame in 2017.

Education and early life

Battle was born in Rusk, Texas in October 1918, and raised in Wewoka, Oklahoma. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, and then graduated from Langston University. In 1954, he was the first African American to receive a PhD degree from Oklahoma State University, writing a dissertation in Agricultural Economics entitled, "Economic effects of some major changes in the flour-milling industry." He was a life member of the

Alpha Phi Alpha Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. () is the oldest intercollegiate historically African American fraternity. It was initially a literary and social studies club organized in the 1905–1906 school year at Cornell University but later evolved int ...

fraternity.

Career

Battle began his professional career as high school teacher, later becoming a professor at Langston University, where he served as department chair. In 1962, he became chair of the Department of Agriculture at Virginia State University in Petersburg, Virginia. He retired from that institution in 1985 as vice president of research and development. He was also a president of the National Economic Association.

References

1918 births 1991 deaths African-American economists Langston University alumni Langston University faculty Military personnel from Oklahoma Economists from Oklahoma Oklahoma State University alumni People from Rusk, Texas People from Wewoka, Oklahoma University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Virginia State University faculty 20th-century African-American scientists 20th-century American academics Presidents of the National Economic Association 20th-century American economists {{US-economist-stub