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St. Clair Drake (January 2, 1911 — 1990) was an American sociologist.

Drake was born in Suffolk, Virginia. Upon graduation from the Hampton institute, he became involved with The Society of Friends in the south. Drake got involved in an anthropological project after that and later published his studies as Deep South. He was moved by the potential that social science could have on changes in racial causes. For a time Drake was a professor at Dillard University.

In 1946, Drake became a professor at Roosevelt University. He was one of the first black faculty members at Roosevelt. While there, he created one of the first African American Studies programs in the United States. Drake taught at Roosevelt for 23 years before leaving in 1973 to chair the African-American studies program at Stanford University. He was responsible for creating the first African American Studies Department at Stanford.

Most of his writings provide accounts of strife and advances in race relations. His collaboration with Horace R. Cayton, Jr. in 1943 led to the publishing of Black Metropolis, a landmark study of race and urban life. Another of Drake's works, which demonstrates his devotion to race relations, was "Black Folk Here and There"(1987).

St. Clair Drake was a member of the American Society of African Culture between 1957 and 1969. He also served as advisor to the first prime minister of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah. Roosevelt University dedicated a center for research on African and African American communities, "The St. Clair Drake Center for African and African American Studies," to his memory.Dr. Drake came to Stanford prior to 1973 and organized the Black Studies program also prior to that year. The previous dates are in error.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "St. Clair Drake", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0