Jidlaph Kamoche, the first director of the American American studies program at the University of Oklahoma, died at his home in Norman on October 31. He was 73 years old.
Professor Kamoche was a native of Kenya and came to the United States to study at Amherst College in Massachusetts, where he majored in history. Dr. Kamoche went on the earn a master’s degree at the University of Massachusetts and a Ph.D. in history from what is now known as the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York system.
Before coming to the University of Oklahoma in 1977, he served as the director of the African and African-American studies program at SUNY-Buffalo. Professor Kamoche was the author of Imperial Trusteeship and Political Evolution in Kenya, 1923-1963: A Study of the Official Views and the Road to Decolonization (University Press of America, 1981).
