Leonard Jeffries

In November 1994, the Supreme Court told the appeals court to reconsider after a related Supreme Court decision. The appeals court reversed its decision in April 1995, and in June, Professor Moyibi Amodo was elected to succeed Jeffries as department chair.

In 1992, Jeffries first got his term shortened from three years to one, and then was removed as chair of the department of African-American studies, but allowed to stay as a professor. He sued the school, and in August 1993 a federal jury found that his First Amendment rights had been violated. But Jeffries had been unanimously reappointed as chair. He was awarded $400,000 in damages (later reduced to $360,000).

During a 1991 speech at the Empire State Black Arts and Cultural Festival in Albany, New York, Jeffries asserted that Russian Jews and the American Mafia were behind a conspiracy of Hollywood film producers to denigrate Black people, and that Jews had also controlled the Atlantic slave trade. His remarks were broadcast on cable television, drawing angry responses from Italian and Jewish Americans.

Jeffries's claims that Jewish businessmen financed the Atlantic slave trade and used the movie industry to hurt black people, and that whites are "ice people" while Africans are "sun people", received national publicity in the early 1990s. Jeffries was discharged from his position as chair of CUNY's Black Studies Department, leading to a long legal battle that ended with the courts affirming the college's right to remove him from the position due to his incendiary remarks.

At the same time, Jeffries worked for Operation Crossroads Africa, allowing him to spend time in Guinea, Mali, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast. He became the program coordinator for West Africa in 1965. Jeffries became a political science instructor at City College of New York (CCNY) in 1969 and received his doctorate from Columbia University in 1971 with a dissertation on politics in the Ivory Coast. He became the founding chairman of Black Studies at San Jose State College in California. A year later, he became a tenured professor at CCNY and chair of its new Black Studies Department.

Jeffries attended Lafayette College for his undergraduate work. At Lafayette, he pledged, and was accepted into, the fraternity Pi Lambda Phi. In his senior year, Jeffries was elected president of the fraternity. After graduating with honors in 1959, he won a Rotary International fellowship to the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. In 1961, he began study at Columbia University's School of International Affairs, from which he received a master's degree in 1965.

Leonard Jeffries Jr. (born January 19, 1937) is former departmental chair of Black Studies at the City College of New York, part of the City University of New York (CUNY). Jeffries is a political scientist, historian, educator, master-teacher/administrator and Pan-Africanist. He was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, where he first developed his leadership skills and Pan-African consciousness. He is the uncle of U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries.