Melville Jacobs

Melville Jacobs was an American anthropologist and folklorist known for his work preserving indigenous cultures and languages of the Pacific Northwest United States. Jacobs was a doctoral student of Franz Boas, a German-American anthropologist and ethnomusicologist who did fieldwork with the Chinookan Peoples. After his time in the field, Jacobs became member of the faculty of the University of Washington in 1928 and remained there until his death in 1971. During the McCarthy Era, Jacobs was targeted for his progressive political activism and his association with the Communist Party USA.