Richard A. Long was a public intellectual and a founder of an African Americans Studies program, who organized pan African festivals and conferences across the African Diaspora.  

Richard A. Long was born in Philadelphia in 1927, to Thaddeus B. and Leila Washington Long. As a child, Richard loved the local art and science museums, absorbing knowledge wherever he could find it. After moving to Columbia, South Carolina with his brother, Long graduated high school at age 15. Long received his BA (1947) and MA (1948) in English from Temple University. From 1948 to 1949 he did doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Visiting Paris for the first time in 1950, he fell in love with the city and returned there often. He studied at Oxford University, the Sorbonne and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for study at the University of Paris (1957-1958). He completed his PhD in medieval literature at the University of Poitiers (1965).

Long began his teaching career at West Virginia State College in 1950 before moving to Baltimore to teach English at Morgan State College. By 1954, he was supervising Morgan State’s integrated humanities program and developing their art collection. From 1966 to 1968, he taught French and English while serving as interim director of the College Museum at Hampton Institute. There, he curated an exhibit of African art, developed Hampton’s collection of African American art, and hosted a conference, the Triennial Symposia of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (1968). From 1968 to 1987, Long joined the faculty of Atlanta University where he taught English and Afro-American Studies and founded the First Annual Conference on African and African American Studies. He also taught at Harvard in Afro-American Studies and the University of North Carolina in linguistics between 1969 and 1971.      

Long, a world traveler, polymath, and organizer, served as a US committee member for the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, held in Lagos, Nigeria in 1978. That same year, he also launched the New World Festival of the African Diaspora in Salvador de Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, followed by festivals in Haiti (1979), Suriname (1982), Barbados (1985), and returning to Brazil in 1988. He also organized a festival in St. Maarten (1987) with Romare and Nanette Bearden.

In 1987, Dr. Long became the Atticus Haygood Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University, which remained his homebase until he retired in 2001. Long took visiting professorships at universities in West, Central, and South Africa and India and served on numerous editorial boards. He was Commissioner for the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, on the National Planner Committee of the Zora Neale Hurston Festival, and was elected president of the College Language Association and the Southwestern Conference on Linguistics. 

Long published numerous books, articles, and creative writings throughout his career.  Among those of interest to folklorists are:

The Black Tradition in American Dance (1990)

Phyllis M. May-Machunda