Social Anthropologist, Family Specialist,
American Theorist, Author, Lecturer, and Church Speaker
Telephone Number (757)461-8741
Fax Number (757)461-2721
Personal Biography
Annie Shaw Barnes was born to Adam Shaw, Jr. and Annie Bell Rutherford Shaw in Cohassett, south central Alabama, and they raised her farther south, on a sharecropping farm, in south central Alabama. Later, Barnes and her mother mimicked slaves’ escape narratives, left the sharecropping farm, and went to Sunbury, North Carolina. Though Barnes and her mother left her father on the sharecropping farm, they never stopped loving and seeing each other.
Barnes received an education and taught American Government and American History to talented and gifted students at Huntington High School in Newport News, Virginia, 1954-1965, taught sociology and anthropology at Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia 1965-1968, and was Eminent Anthropology Scholar Professor at Norfolk State University, in Norfolk, Virginia, from 1971-1997, thereby ending a forty-year-teaching-career and retiring as Norfolk State University Anthropology Professor Emerita. During this time, Barnes and her mother, who lived in Sunbury, North Carolina, only lived fifty or sixty miles apart. Before and after Barnes became a married daughter, she and her mother wrote letters to each other, talked on the telephone, visited, and shared their problems and good times, however, Barnes was careful about telling her mother anything that would hurt her feelings, therefore, Barnes usually told her mother what made her smile. So, the story is that Annie Shaw Barnes and her mother were best friends.
Barnes balanced her teaching and daughter schedule with her forty-four-years-of marriage to Bennie M. Barnes, Supervisory Personnel Management Specialist for the US Department of Defense, as an involved loving wife, who cooked him delicious meals, daily, when they did not have leftovers, and they had lots of fun going to church and enjoying their Heavenly Father, traveling, playing duplicate bridge, dancing, and talking with each other. A corner of their kitchen table, especially at dinnertime, was where they discussed and debated the content of Barnes’s manuscripts that were published as articles and books, and recently completed writings.
For her husband, Barnes was pleased to serve as President of the Norfolk, Virginia Chapter of Alpha Wives,1975-1976, African American women married to his Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Brothers, and Barnes experienced a joyous time serving her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, as President of the Norfolk, Virginia Alumnae Chapter, 1976-1978, and as a member of Delta Sigma Theta’s National Properties Committee, 1977 to 1979, Washington, DC, with Delta Sigma Theta Sorority National President Thelma T. Daily.
Barnes and her husband are the proud parents of one daughter and grandparents of a delightful granddaughter. She bakes her daughter’s favorite desert, gourmet coconut cake, and her granddaughter’s favorite desert, gourmet zucchini pie.
Professional Biography
Annie Shaw Barnes attended Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, as an undergraduate, majored in sociology and minored in American history, and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1953. Barnes subsequently trained as a master’s degree student in sociology at Atlanta University, Georgia, in the sociology department, and received her master’s degree, dated January, 1955. From 1897 to 1910, while he was serving as chairman of Atlanta University sociology department, the great Negro intellectual W.E.B. DuBois made Atlanta University sociology department famous. There, he wrote The Philadelophia Negro, 1998, a community study, and The Souls of Black Folks, 1903, to describe the efforts of Negroes to reconcile their African heritage with their pride in being America citizens, and Atlanta University is the oldest Negro graduate institution in America, founded in 1865.
From 1954 to 1965 Barnes taught gifted and talented eleventh and twelfth graders at Newport News High School, Virginia, and, from 1965 to 1968, Barnes taught anthropology and sociology at Hampton Institute,Virginia. While teaching at Hampton Institute, Barnes introduced Professor Margaret Mead,author of Coming of Age in Samoa and a member of Hampton Institute’s Board of Visitors, for her lecture at Hampton Institute Museum, and earned ten semester university credit hours in race, social, physical, and genetic anthropology in the summer National Science Foundation Institute at the University of Colorado, 1967. There, she was taught by several anthropology professors, including Professors Leslie White, Alice Brues, C. Loring Brace, David L. Greene, and John Greenway.
A year later, Barnes enrolled in the University of Virginia Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Charlottesville, and graduated in 1971, thereby earning her some “firsts” at the University of Virginia. Barnes was the first African American to earn a degree in anthropology from the University of Virginia, the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, and the second African American to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.
From 1971-1997, Barnes was Eminent Scholar of Anthropology in Norfolk State University Sociology Department, Virginia. While there, Barnes was selected Best Teacher at Norfolk State University, twice, and her classes were full, still, her students requested and obtained her permission for their friends to hear certain lectures listed on her syllabus, and, at other times, when she completed her lectures and left the classroom, she saw students, who had come to hear her lecture, sitting on the floor, beside her classroom door. Also, Barnes was one of the Virginia State Council of Higher Education thirteen Best professors of the year in 1988, and the council selected Barnes to speak, on behalf of herself and the other twelve 1988 Best Virginia professors at the Corporate Banquet honoring the recipients.
Barnes was given the opportunity to extend her work beyond Norfolk State University and Virginia. She read thirteen professional papers in sessions and symposia at the American Anthropology Association (AAA) annual meetings, and was AAA’s Invited Chair for one scholarly session, and organizer of sessions, key symposia, and roundtable discussions.
Dr. Barnes was invited and accepted the chance to work in the AAA structure. She served as the President of the Association of Black Anthropologists, Chair of Blacks in Education Committee, twice, member of the National Council of Anthropology and Education, chaired by Professors George and Louise Spindler from Stanford University, California. She was appointed, with the help of Professor Sylvia Forman, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, member of the organizing committee of the General Anthropology Division (GAD) of AAA, and, therefore, she was one of the GAD organizers, and she served on its first board as member at large. In addition, AAA appointed Barnes to the national external and administrative advisory committees.
In the Southern Anthropology Society (SAS), Dr. Barnes read several papers at professional meetings, including her first, “Illegitimacy in Black Families,” at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI), Blacksburg, 1973, where she gave a lecture on the subject of her paper at VPI’s radio station, and the VPI radio station aired the lecture on twenty-six radio stations. Barnes read a paper on black college students assessment of Alex Haley’s Roots to a packed SAS annual meeting audience, and she was invited to present two symposia papers, “Single Mothers in Black Colleges,” 1989, and “African American Teen Pregnancy in the South, 1992,” and the Southern Anthropology Society published the symposia at the University of Georgia Press, Athens.
Dr. Barnes was elected the first African American woman president of the then fifty-seven-year-old Virginia Social Science Association, served on its board, held all the positions in the Virginia Social Science Association, and published an article, “Black Single Fathers: Continuity, Neutrality, and Change” in the Virginia Social Science Journal, 1990.
Barnes has been invited to present papers in other fields of study at their annual meetings, including the American Sociology Association (ASA). Upon the invitation of Professor Charles V. Willie, author of The Family Life of Black People and sociology professor at Syracuse University in New York, Barnes read a paper, “The Social System in a Black Middle Class Neighborhood,” at ASA’s annual meeting in Montreal, Canada, 1974.
Barnes has authored five chapters in colleagues’ books, five abstracts, including the abstract, “The Black Kinship System,” in Sociological Abstracts, Inc., Volume 31, Number 2, 1983, and nineteen refereed articles in professional journals. Perhaps five of Barnes’s articles stand out among the nineteen. Phylon: The Atlanta University Review of Race and Culture, founded by W. E. B. DuBois, published her first article, ever, “The Black Beauty Parlor Complex in a Southern City,” 1975,” and, in 1981, Phylon published the author’s highly successful article, “The Black Kinship System.” Dr. Barnes’s third highly successful article, “Voluntary Association Participation: Churches and Bridge Clubs,” was published by Editor Charles H. Faulkner, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in Tennessee Anthropologist, 1979. The fourth article of high significance was “Negro Residential Patterns in Atlanta, Georgia, 1860-1983,” published by Editor Meyer Weinberg in Integrateducation ,1984. And Barnes’s fifth article, singled out, was, “Mistresses and Masters and African American Domestic Workers: Ideals for Change,” published by Editor Phyllis Peacock, in the Anthropology Quarterly, at Catholic University, Washington, D. C., 1993.
Barnes, with the consent of Professor Jack R. Rollwagen, State University of New York,Brockport, edited and published a special issue of the international journal Urban Anthropology: and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development (Volume l5, Number 3-4, Fall-Winter, l986) and published an article, “Comparative Policing in America” in Droit et Cultures, 1997, University of Paris, with support from her Anthropology Colleague, Professor Carol J. Greenhouse at Indiana University, Bloomington.
The author has conducted empirical research in Osuwem, Ghana, West Africa, and across America, especially in the South. She conducted research at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, USDB, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and, based on her paper, about the research, Patrick Air Force Base published it as a brochure, and she conducted world wide research about domestic violence in military marriages, with Hal H. Rosen, John P. Sheposh, Joyce Shettel-Dutcher, Jill M. Ralston, and Steve Talley, and the Navy Personnel and Research Development Center, San Diego, CA., published it as a brochure, 1997.
While conducting research at the USDB, Barnes lived at the Cooke House, where US generals and colonels live when they have business at Fort Leavenworth, and it is where General Colin Powell stayed, in 1994, the year (1995) before Barnes did, to dedicate the Buffalo Soldiers Black Militiamen Monument.
It was Tony Brown, who put a media face on the author, while he interviewed Dr. Barnes and Dr. Charles Simmons about their publication regarding Norfolk State University’s students’ assessment of Alex Haley’s Roots, that was shown on his national Tony Brown Journal television program, 1979, and Tony Brow interviewed Barnes again, 2001, about her new book, Everyday Racism.
Mr. John Johnson, owner of JET MAGAZINE and EBONY, put a national print face on Barnes. She was featured in JET, a John Johnson publication, 1983, when she served as first African American woman president of Virginia Social Science Association. In 1985, EBONY placed Barnes's book, Black Middle Class Family, on its Book Shelf.
In Virginia, the author has been regular contributor to the daily newspaper, The Virginian-Pilot and the weekly newspaper, The New Journal and Guide, and Hampton Roads television affiliates, ABC, CBS, and NBC, local Public Broadcasting Network, and numerous radio programs, including popular call-in talk shows, usually done in her Norfolk State University office, at her home, at research sites, especially in ghettos and inner cities, and in newsrooms, and they all made Barnes into a local expert on black issues.
Barnes’s picture was featured on cover of Portfolio Magazine (Hampton Roads, Virginia, l988). Inside the issue, she discussed "Race and Economics: The Dilemma of the Black Middle Class." The cover picture was featured year in television advertisement collage to attract tourists and advertise tourist and resort region, in which she lives, Southampton Roads, Virginia (Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Newport News, and Hampton).
In 1995, the International Speakers Platform Association invited and elected Barnes to its membership, thereby giving her the credential to speak on platforms, where some of the best speakers lecture and elsewhere.