Born in Cincinnati, Mack’s love for learning grew during his years in the Springfield City School District. In the 1979 South yearbook, he wrote: “Being a member of the National Honor Society is both a reward and an honor, and it will be remembered for the rest of my life.”
His obituary said “treasured childhood memories” included outings at Glen Helen Nature Preserve and at his grandfather’s Ohio farm.
A member of Second Missionary Baptist Church in his youth, Mack graduated from Howard with honors in 1986 and earned his master’s in biological anthropology in 1980 at the University of Massachusetts. He was a doctoral candidate at the University of Florida.
Mack started teaching at Howard in 1993 and was curator of the W. Montague Cobb Biological Anthropology Laboratory and laboratory director for the Foley Square New York African Burial Ground Project.
Arvilla Jackson, a professor and later a colleague of Mack’a at Howard, called him “an electrifying teacher,” a committed researcher whose expertise was widely recognized, and a person whose loss to the students and faculty of Howard’s anthropology family is beyond expression.
A master teacher, Mack’s research included examining the biological aspects of the African diaspora, the health of Jamaican sugar workers, dental analysis of a Bronze Age skeleton and identification of animal remains at a prehistoric Florida lake.
More widely known — and a hallmark of his career — was Mack’s work on the African Burial Ground Project.
His awards included a University of Massachusetts European Program Grant, a Smithsonian Institution Minority Graduate Fellowship and the District of Columbia Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation in Archaeology.
Survivors include his parents, Augustus and Betty Lou Garrison Mack; sisters Michele and Whitney Mack; wife, Cindy, whom he married in 1994; and a daughter, Amirah, born in 2010.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com
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