Kenneth Harold Libo ’59

Kenneth Harold Libo ’59 passed away on March 29 in New York City from complications of an infection. Ken was born in Norwich, Connecticut, entering Dartmouth from Norwich Free Academy, where he participated in the forensics and dramatic clubs. At Dartmouth he was a member of the Forensic Union, Film Society, Germania and the International Relations Club his senior year. He served as a U.S. naval oceanographic research officer on San Salvador Island, Bahamas. In 1974 he earned a Ph.D. from City University of New York and embarked on a career in American Jewish history. As a graduate student working for literary critic Irving Howe, Ken unearthed historical documentation that shaped the publication of Howe’s World of Our Fathers; Ken is credited with adding emotional detail and a view of everyday life in the tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Ken collaborated with Howe on two other books: How We Lived, a 1979 anthology of pictures and documentary accounts of Jewish life in New York between 1880 and 1930; and We Lived There, Too, a history of Jews on the Western frontier of America. Ken was the first English-language editor of The Jewish Daily Forward in 1980, lectured widely, taught literature and history at Hunter College and later in life helped several Jewish New York families write self-published family histories. Ken enjoyed traveling to Europe, Mexico, Australia and South America and was an active participant in class activities.