13 Facts About Sol Tax

Sol Tax is best known for creating action anthropology and his studies of the Meskwaki, or Fox, Indians, for "action-anthropological" research titled the Fox Project, and for founding the academic journal Current Anthropology.

Sol Tax received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1935 and, together with Fred Eggan, was a student of Alfred Radcliffe-Brown.

Sol Tax later earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1935.

Sol Tax joined the faculty of that institution in 1940 where he spent several decades teaching.

Sol Tax was a mentor to noted anthropologist Joan Ablon at the University of Chicago.

Sol Tax was the main organizer for the 1959 Darwin Centennial Celebration held at the University of Chicago.

Sol Tax was an organizer, along with the National Congress of American Indians, including Native American organizer Willard LaMere, of the 1961 American Indian Chicago Conference.

Sol Tax assisted in authoring the resulting Statement of Indian Purpose, the first major statement of the policy of tribal self-determination.

Sol Tax intermittently served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology along with Robert Redfield after the retirement of Fay-Cooper Cole in the late 1940s.

The politics of the department had changed with the faculty body, and Redfield and Sol Tax determined that the Skeletal Collection no longer served the research purposes of the department, and the storage space could be better used.

Sol Tax is known as a founder of "Action Anthropology", a school of anthropological thought that forwent the traditional doctrine of non-interference in favor of co-equal goals of "learning and helping" from studied cultures.

In 1974, when the Chicago Native American Committee established the Native American Educational Services College, Sol Tax served on its original academic review committee.

Sol Tax accepted an invitation to join, and he served on the committee until 1993, not long before his death.