Quinton Bernard Wilkes, the first African American man to earn a Ph.D. in psychology at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York, and one of the founders of the Black studies program at Fordham, died on New Year’s Day. He was 73 years old and suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
A native of Washington, D.C., Dr. Wilkes earned his undergraduate degree at Morgan State University in Baltimore. He served in the U.S. Army in West Germany before earning his doctorate at Fordham. He then served for 30 years in the New Jersey Department of Mental Health and was active in the civil rights movement.
