Making a Gift: Endowed Funds
Mary and George Foster African Studies Library Fund
Noted anthropologists and former undergraduate students at Northwestern, George Foster and Mary LeCron Foster, wanted to establish an endowed fund supporting Northwestern's Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies - the most renowned Africana collection in the world.
The Fosters met during the spring term of 1934 as students of noted anthropologist, Melville J. Herskovits, and eventually married. Sparked by Herskovits's teaching, Mary, the third generation of her family to attend Northwestern, and George went on to make anthropology their life's work. Both have made lasting contributions to the field - George in the development of social anthropology theory at the University of California, Berkeley, and Mary in the field of linguistics and symbolic anthropology at California State University, Hayward.
Their decision to establish an endowed fund to support collections as well as the acquisition of rare and out-of-print books for the Africana collection is their way of reinvesting in an institution that educated them. Their gift continues a legacy for Northwestern students who follow them.
David Easterbrook, the Foster Curator of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies,
with Mary and George Foster and David Bishop, University Librarian (left to right).
