Dr. William Montague Cobb was an outstanding clinical physician, scholar of anatomy and community health, human rights and anti-racist activist, innovator, mentor and the first African American to earn a doctorate in physical anthropology. The Cobb tradition is characterized by an emphasis on African Americans and their biological diversity, a recognition of the role of social and historical factors as major forces affecting human biology, impartiality in research, and innovation and creativity in teaching. Dr. Cobb established the Cobb Research Laboratory in 1932, producing the largest collection of African American skeletal and dental materials for interdisciplinary research into human equality.