Carl Anthony, former professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, passed away on April 4. He was 87 years old.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Anthony attended Columbia University in New York City, where he was the only African American student enrolled in the Ivy League institution’s architecture school. During his studies, he traveled to several HBCUs to encourage other Black students to apply to Columbia and study architecture. After graduating with his bachelor’s degree in 1969, he spent one year studying African traditional building in Spain and West Africa.
From 1971 to 1979, Anthony taught as an assistant professor of architecture in UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. He later co-created the firm, Anthony, Fleming & Assoc., in Oakland. In 1988, he was appointed to the board of Earth Island Insitute, where he would ultimately co-found the Urban Habitat Program to support multicultural leadership in environmental justice movements. Anthony also co-produced Race, Poverty, and the Environment, a magazine dedicated to advancing discourse on environmental justice.
In 1996, Anthony served as a fellow with the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He went on to serve seven years as director of the Ford Foundation’s Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative in New York City. Later, Anthony returned to California to co-found Breakthrough Communities in Oakland.
In 2017, Anthony published his memoir, The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race (New Village Press).
