Eileen J. Southern

Eileen J. Southern, the first female, black professor at Harvard, died Oct. 13, 2002 in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. She was 82.

Southern is best known for her 1971 work, The Music of Black Americans: A History, which is still widely credited as one of the definitive texts in the field.

“She single-handedly brought the civil rights movement to musicology,” said Carol Oja, president-elect of the Society for American Music.

Between 1973 and 1990, Southern published the influential scholarly journal, The Black Perspective in Music.

In April, Southern received the National Humanities Medal. In 1975, Southern was appointed to a joint professorship in Afro-American studies and music by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. One year later, she became the second chair in the history of the fledgling Afro-American studies department, a position which she held until 1980.

Southern’s tenure at Harvard was often marred by conflict, which she wrote about in an essay, “A Pioneer: Black and Female,” published in the 1993 anthology Blacks at Harvard. Southern wrote of her efforts to garner respect both for herself and for the young department.

Southern retired from the Faculty in 1986.

Robert Tonis

Robert Tonis, who led the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) through its transformation into a professional police force, died April 11 at the age of 94.

Tonis, who was HUPD’s chief from 1962 to 1975, was known as Harvard’s “Renaissance Cop.”

A three-decade veteran of the FBI who helped investigate the infamous 1950 Brinks robbery, Tonis was appointed HUPD’s third police chief in 1962.

Tonis took over the department as campus policing was undergoing its biggest revolution since its inception in the 1890s.